An increasing portion of contemporary politics revolves around a set of claims made by those (typically derisively) referred to as NIMBYs. Despite its practical significance, NIMBYism has not received significant attention in academic philosophy. I attempt a charitable but limited reconstruction of NIMBYism in terms of legitimate expectations. I argue that, despite NIMBY expectations being somewhat vague and at least moderately unjust, they may be legitimate. This does not imply that they are decisive, or entail a conclusion about their overall (...) normative force. I close by developing some tentative details in institutional design, focusing on the possibility of monetary compensation as a way of recognizing, but limiting the force of, NIMBY expectations. (shrink)

Expectations play an important role in how people plan their lives and pursue their projects. People living in highly industrialized countries share a way of life that comes with high levels of emissions. Their expectations to be able to continue their projects imply their holding expectations to similarly high future levels of personal emissions. We argue that the frustration or undermining of these expectations would cause them significant harm. Further, the article investigates under what conditions people can be thought to (...) hold legitimate expectations, in particular about permissible levels of future emissions. We distinguish differing theories of understanding these conditions, namely authority-based and justice-based theories, that each allows us to systematically distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate expectations. Furthermore, with respect to individuals’ future permissible emissions we give several reasons for holding that such theories cannot identify a particular expectation to a specific level of personal emissions as the only legitimate one. Finally, we argue that the set of legitimate expectations that people hold with respect to a just and effective solution to climate change has normative significance in at least two ways: the differing but equally legitimate expectations ought to be taken into account when justifying what could count as such a solution and when determining the just way of arriving at and implementing such a solution. (shrink)

This paper focuses on land as a domain in which legitimate expectations can give rise to entitlements. The central argument is that people are connected to other people and to projects, which are symbolically and materially rooted in particular places. This gives rise to an interest – an interest that is sufficiently weighty that it imposes obligations on other people – to protect stability of place. There are two ways in which legitimate expectations structure argument about land. It justifies liberty (...) rights to remain in a place, and not be removed or expelled from it, independently of the coercion that often accompanies forcible expulsion, and argue for rights of return as a second-order right when this right has been violated. I also argue that passage of time in a changed context can affect people’s legitimate expectations, and so their entitlements. (shrink)

Debates concerning digital automation are mostly focused on the question of the availability of jobs in the short and long term. To counteract the possible negative effects of automation, it is often suggested that those at risk of technological unemployment should have access to retraining and reskilling opportunities. What is often missing in these debates are implications that all of this may have for individual autonomy understood as the ability to make and develop long-term plans. In this paper, I argue (...) that if digital automation becomes rapid, it will significantly undermine the legitimate expectation of stability and consequently, the ability to make and pursue long-term plans in the sphere of work. I focus on what is often taken to be one of the main long-term plans, i.e. the choice of profession, and I argue that this choice may be undermined by the pressure to continuously acquire new skills while at the same time facing a diminishing range of professions that one can choose from. Given that the choice of profession is significant for not-work related spheres of life, its undermining can greatly affect individual autonomy in these other spheres too. I argue that such undermining of individual planning agency constitutes a distinctive form of harm that necessitates a proactive institutional response. (shrink)

Recent scholarly attention to ‘legitimate expectations’ and their role in legal transitions has yielded widely varying principles for distinguishing between legitimate and non-legitimate expectations. This article suggests that methodological reflection may facilitate substantive progress in the debate. Specifically, it proposes and defends the use of a wide reflective equilibrium methodology for constructing, justifying and critiquing theories of legitimate expectations and other kinds of normative theories about legal transitions. The methodology involves three levels of analysis — normative principles, their theoretical antecedents, (...) and considered judgements about their implications in specific cases — and iteration between these three levels in an effort to ensure coherence. The payoffs from applying this methodology to the legitimate expectations debate are illustrated through a discussion of examples from the existing literature. Some proposed innovations to the methodology, including the incorporation of insights from the ideal/non-ideal theory debate, are likely to be of wider interest to political theorists. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a framework to analyse the principle of the protection of legitimate expectations. It focuses on two main issues: the existence of a legitimate expectation and the protection that such an expectation deserves. On the first issue, I define the expectations, outline the internalist approach to legitimacy that I endorse in this context and explain two elements that make the legitimacy of the expectation vary (i.e. the passage of time and the type of law). On the (...) second issue, I first address the question of competing interests in general and the principle of equality in particular. Paying attention to the principle of equality implies we should look at the relative situation, after the change, of the persons that lose from the change and of the rest of the population. I then approach the balance of interests. (shrink)