Using automated systems to avoid the need for human discretion in government contexts – a scenario we call ‘rule by automation’ – can help us achieve the ideal of a free and equal society. Drawing on relational theories of freedom and equality, we explain how rule by automation is a more complete realization of the rule of law and why thinkers in these traditions have strong reasons to support it. Relational theories are based on the absence of human domination and (...) hierarchy, which automation helps us achieve. Nevertheless, there is another understanding of relational theories where what matters is the presence of valuable relationships with those in power. Exploring this further might help us see when and why we should accept human discretion. (shrink)

Prosecutors in the US legal system have great power to interfere at their discretion in the lives of citizens, and face relatively few checks on the exercise of this discretion. The vast scope of the criminal law provides a pretext for prosecuting nearly anyone. Meanwhile, other features of the legal system, such as the way plea bargains are structured and the doctrine of prosecutorial immunity, further increase prosecutorial power. And existing institutional restraints on prosecutorial abuses, such as democratic accountability, the (...) grand jury system, and the possibility of a selective prosecution defense, are mostly ineffectual. I draw on republican political theory, including insights from Philip Pettit and Elizabeth Anderson, to argue that this state of affairs gives prosecutors dominating, and therefore unjust, power over vast swathes of the public. I then survey some potential institutional changes which might help ameliorate the problem. (shrink)

Theories of domination are primarily attempts to understand the value of justice, freedom, and equality by examining cases where they are absent. Such theories seek to clarify and systematize our judgments about what it is to be weak against uncontrolled strength, i.e., about what it is to be vulnerable, degraded, and defenseless against unrestrained power. -/- Much contemporary disagreement about domination involves competing answers to three questions: (1) Who, or what, can dominate? (2) Is it possible to dominate merely by (...) having power with a certain structure, or is domination an exercise or an abuse of power? (3) Exercised or unexercised, what kind of power is domination? The remainder of this entry will address each of these questions in turn, then conclude with a survey of how the idea of domination has been used in recent applied ethical theory. It will become clear as we examine competing answers to these three questions that different theorists have very different ideas of why, exactly, we need a theory of domination. There may be wide agreement that we need the idea of domination to make sense of unjust power relations, but unjust power relations are wildly varied, and theorists of domination disagree not only about which varieties most need to be understood, but about how theorizing domination helps us to understand them. (shrink)

Philip Pettit’s conception of freedom as nondomination is modally robust in that it requires not simply reducing the probability of uncontrolled interference by others but entirely eliminating that possibility. In this article, I consider whether freedom as nondomination provides an attractive analysis of official discretion, particularly in the context of the criminal law, an area of recurring interest for Pettit. I argue that not only does the modally robust character of freedom as nondomination have some rather unattractive implications in the (...) criminal law, but that it sits poorly with Pettit’s more general ambitions to provide a consequentialist framework for the evaluation of social institutions. Drawing on recent work by Niko Kolodny, I develop an ‘anti-deference’ interpretation of nondomination and contrast it to Pettit’s modally robust conception. (shrink)

When assessing institutions and social outcomes, it matters how free society is within them (‘societal freedom’). For example, does capitalism come with greater societal freedom than socialism? For such judgements, freedom theorists typically assume Individualism: societal freedom is simply the aggregate of individual freedom. However, G.A. Cohen’s well-known case provides a challenge: imagine ten prisoners are individually free to leave their prison but doing so would incarcerate the remaining nine. Assume further that no one actually leaves. If we adopt Individualism (...) plus the standard liberal view of freedom, such incarceration seems to leave societal freedom unaffected. This is an important theoretical challenge: it seems we must either reject Individualism or reject, or at least amend, the liberal view. Cohen also suggests his case, and the collective unfreedom therein, helps us capture how proletarians are unfree under capitalism. In this article, I argue that we can solve Cohen’s puzzle, if we focus on how power can reduce freedom. If we adopt the republican view of freedom, we can say that prisoners are unfree in Cohen’s case because they are dominated by the other prisoners. This solution keeps Individualism but moves beyond liberal freedom. I then also show how this individualistic framework captures proletarian unfreedom. (shrink)

According to relational egalitarians, equality is not primarily about the distribution of some good but about people relating to one another as equals. However, compared with other theorists in political philosophy – including other egalitarians – relational egalitarians have said relatively little on what role personal responsibility should play in their theories. For example, is equality compatible with responsibility? Should economic distributions be responsibility-sensitive? This article fills this gap. I develop a relational egalitarian framework for personal responsibility and show that (...) relational equality commits us to responsibility. I develop two sets of arguments. First, I draw on relational theories of moral responsibility – particularly Strawsonian views – to show that valuable egalitarian relationships require responsibility. Second, I show why relational equality sometimes requires that economic distributions be sensitive to responsibility and choice. I also defend a seemingly paradoxical result: being committed to responsibility, relational egalitarianism not only justifies some distributive inequalities but some relational inequalities too. Overall, relational egalitarianism gives a nuanced and coherent answer as to why and how responsibility matters from within egalitarianism. That it does should be an important argument in its favour. (shrink)