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Review of Justice by Michael Sandel

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It is easy to see why Michael Sandel is a popular Harvard professor. He presents major ideas of ethics and political philosophy in a clear way, tied to important contemporary issues. Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, based on a famous course that Sandel teaches, offers a discussion of what Sandel regards as the three main competing views of justice.

The first of these takes welfare to be the criterion of justice. What counts as just is what leads to the best consequences. Thus, supporters of the free market such as Milton Friedman praise the market because it leads to prosperity, in contrast with other economic systems.

Why do we care [about prosperity]… The most obvious answer is that we think prosperity makes us better off than we would otherwise be — as individuals and as a society. Prosperity matters, in other words, because it contributes to our welfare. (p. 19)

Another approach, which many libertarians will find familiar, takes freedom and rights to be fundamental to justice. What is essential, according to this way of seeing things, is to give each person what is rightfully due to him, even if following this course does not lead to the best consequences.

The approach to justice that begins with freedom is a capacious school… Leading the laissez-faire camp are free-market libertarians who believe that justice consists in respecting and upholding the voluntary choices made by consenting adults. The fairness camp contains theorists of a more egalitarian bent. (p. 20)

The third view, the one to which Sandel is himself inclined, stresses virtue. What character traits should the government, as well as society as whole, endeavor to inculcate in the population?

The idea of legislating morality is anathema to many citizens of liberal societies, as it risks lapsing into intolerance and coercion. But the notion that a just society affirms certain

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