Normative discourse on genocide frequently refers to group injuries, but this can be problematic for those for whom normative justification ought, in principle, to be reducible to individual terms. Such ethical individualists may hold that an ultimately individualizable description of injury is always theoretically superior (in lacking either superfluous or ontologically suspect entities). Accepting the strictures of individualistic justification, this paper presumes that attributing injury to group subjects will be unsatisfying if this attribution does not include a normatively significant group (...) character. Taking up these challenges, this essay analyzes the conceptual possibility of normatively significant group injury, describing its necessary and sufficient conditions. (shrink)

This paper attempts to offer a group-based approach to reparations for slavery. I argue that by appealing to a group-based approach to reparations, one can avoid some of the significant problems associated with attempting to justify reparations on an individual level. I argue that, properly formulated, a group-based approach can avoid problems of identification, the non-identity problem, as well as misgivings about appealing to the notion that groups can have a moral standing that is not merely the aggregation of the (...) moral standing of the individual group members. In order to show that a group-based approach is a viable solution to these issues, I appeal to Larry May’s account of groups. (shrink)