Justice in general
• We need to distinguish between the following:
• Formal principle of justice
• Substantive principles of justice
• Procedural principles of justice
Monday, September 10, 12
Procedural justice
• Procedural principles of justice give us a
procedure -- like flipping a coin -- which
produce just solutions.
• They are of three sorts:
• Perfect
• Imperfect
• Pure
Monday, September 10, 12
Procedural justice
• There are two variables of importance for these
procedural principles:
• Do we know what we would be just?
• Can we design a procedure to achieve the
just result?
Monday, September 10, 12
Perfect procedural justice
• We can answer both questions:
• We know what would be just, and
• We can design a procedure to get it.
Monday, September 10, 12
Perfect procedural justice
• Think here of flipping a coin for an object
where there are two claimants, neither of
whom has a right to the object -- “I’ll flip you
for it!” in tied Nevada elections.
• We know what is just: that one of the two win
the election.
• We know how to achieve that end: we flip a
coin.
Monday, September 10, 12
Perfect procedural justice
• Or think of having two children clamoring for
the last piece of cake, each saying they deserve
the largest piece.
• A parent would say, “You cut and you get first
pick.”
• Again, we know what we would be just -- each
getting a fair share -- and we have figured out
how to achieve that end.
Monday, September 10, 12
Problems
• But things can go wrong.
• Someone may be able to flip a coin so as to
ensure a certain outcome.
• Or a roulette wheel operator may control the
wheel to pick winners and losers.
• In short, the procedure may be faulty.
Monday, September 10, 12
Problematic procedure
• Even having one child cut a cake and the other
have first choice can be problematic.
• Consider this story of Nick and Katie.
• They both wanted the last piece of cake from
the party the day before, and their mother said,
“Katie, you cut, and Nick, you get first choice.”
Monday, September 10, 12
Problematic procedure
• Katie, at 5, was tall enough to stand up to the
kitchen counter and cut, and Nick, at 3, was so
short he couldn’t see the counter top.
• So Katie cut the cake, turned and let Nick have
first choice.
Monday, September 10, 12
Here’s what the piece looked
like to Nick.
Monday, September 10, 12
Problematic procedure
• Nick was astonished to see such a large piece of
cake his sister had cut for him, and he grabbed
it without waiting even for a plate.
• Nick was impulsive, and Katie knew he would
grab it without further thought.
Monday, September 10, 12
Here’s what the end of the
piece of cake looked like.
Monday, September 10, 12
Problematic procedure
• When Nick realized he had only gotten a thin
top layer, he started jumping up and down
screaming.
• Katie calmly turned back to the counter and
started to eat her very large piece of cake.
Monday, September 10, 12
Problematic procedure
• Their parent had tried to achieve two ends:
• that the division be fair.
• that neither Katie nor Nick could complain
about what they got. If Katie were careless,
she would have only herself to blame; if Nick
picked the smallest piece, it was his fault.
Monday, September 10, 12
Problematic procedure
• She certainly failed to get a fair division.
• It is arguable that Nick had no right to
complain, having had the chance to get a very
large piece, but blowing it through his
impulsiveness.
Monday, September 10, 12
Problematic procedure
• The procedure encouraged Katie to take
advantage of her brother’s impulsiveness,
bringing out the worst in Katie.
• It was not such a perfect procedure after all: we
know what would have been fair, and the
parent failed to achieve it.
Monday, September 10, 12
Imperfect procedural justice
• As we said, there are two variables of
importance for these procedural principles:
• Do we know what we would be just?
• Can we design a procedure to achieve the
just result?
• In imperfect procedural justice, we know what
would be just, but cannot design a procedure to
achieve a just result.
Monday, September 10, 12
Imperfect procedural justice
• The criminal justice system is an example.
• We know what is just: finding guilty all those
who have committed a crime and only those
who have committed a crime.
• We cannot devise a system which does just
that. We convict those who are innocent and
find innocent whose who committed a crime.
Monday, September 10, 12
Imperfect procedural justice
• So we weigh the procedure:
• To ensure that all who committed a crime
are found guilty -- at the expense of
convicting some who are innocent. E.g.
blessing the water and throwing in a
suspected witch
• Or to ensure that all who are innocent go
free -- at the expense of letting free some
who committed crimes.
Monday, September 10, 12
Imperfect procedural justice
• In either case, we will end up with a procedure
that fails to sort out those who committed a
crime from those who did not.
• The same is true for the welfare system, for
driver license tests, for gun tests (e.g. the
Michigan 10-question T/F exam), for police
enforcement of driving laws, and on and on.
Monday, September 10, 12
Imperfect procedural justice
• It is perennially claimed that some people are
getting what they do not deserve (welfare
queens, for instance) while some are not.
• The procedure we use guarantees that result.
• The best we can do is to fine tune the
procedure, tightening up here, loosening up
there. But we will never get it just right.
Monday, September 10, 12
Imperfect procedural justice
• That is not to say that imperfect procedures
cannot be improved.
• Hamburger can harbor E. coli, including the
virulent strain 0157:H7 that killed four children
after the Jack-in-the-box outbreak in 1994.
• It is illegal to sell hamburger with that E. coli.
• But the procedures to ensure the beef is good
are insufficient.
Monday, September 10, 12
Improving imperfect
procedures
• There are six players in the chain:
• Suppliers
• Slaughterhouses
• Grinders
• Meat packers
• Stores
• Customers
Monday, September 10, 12
Improving imperfect
procedures
• Those bringing cattle, pigs, poultry and other
livestock to a slaughterhouse are supposed to
ensure that only healthy animals are included.
• But they sometimes don’t: e.g. Michigan’s PBB
crisis, mad cow disease.
Monday, September 10, 12
Improving imperfect
procedures
• The slaughterhouses are required to check for
pathogens, but there is almost no check on
whether they check. That is why we get the
recalls -- e.g. peanut butter with salmonella
killed six last year, sickened several thousand.
• And slaughterhouses often refuse to sell to
grinders who test for pathogens. If they find
any, that is trouble for the slaughterhouses.
Monday, September 10, 12
Improving imperfect
procedures
• And some grinders refuse to sell to meat
packers who check for pathogens: if they find
any, that is trouble for the grinders.
• And some meat packers refuse to sell to stores
that check for pathogens -- e.g. Cargill will not
sell to Costco.
Monday, September 10, 12
Improving imperfect
procedures
• So...we know what we want: hamburger that is
safe to eat.
• What we have got is a procedure for producing
hamburger that fails to sort out and discard
infected meat: it is just a matter of chance
whether you get it or not.
• There is clearly room for improvement in the
procedure.
Monday, September 10, 12
Pure procedural justice
• As we said, there are two variables of
importance for these procedural principles:
• Do we know what we would be just?
• Can we design a procedure to achieve the
just result?
• In pure procedural justice, we can design a
procedure that is just, but have no idea what
would be just.
Monday, September 10, 12
Knowing what would be just?
• What does it mean to say we have no idea what
would be just?
• In both perfect and imperfect procedural
justice, we know ahead-of-time what result
would be just -- what each individual
deserves.
• Someone who has committed a crime
deserves to be found guilty; someone who is
innocent deserves to be found innocent.
Monday, September 10, 12
Pure procedural justice
• In pure procedural justice, we design a
procedure that is pure:
• There is no cheating, and
• no coercion,
• and nothing about the procedure itself that
skews the result in any way.
Monday, September 10, 12
Pure procedural justice
• The lottery, voting, Monopoly are examples -• as long as the selection process is free of any
bias -- e.g. loaded dice, election software,
• no one cheats -- the kid next door we could
not trust in Monopoly,
• no one coerces anyone to achieve a
particular end -- my brother regarding the
railroads in Monopoly.
Monday, September 10, 12
Pure procedural justice
• If the procedure is pure, then whoever wins
wins, and everyone else loses.
• The winner does not “deserve” to win, and the
losers do not “deserve” to lose: what anyone
deserves is completely irrelevant.
Monday, September 10, 12
Pure procedural justice
• The power of pure procedural justice is that
everyone has an equal chance at winning.
• E.g. the black man in the ghetto who was asked
why he played the lottery: “It’s the only thing
in my life where I have as good a chance as
anyone else of winning.”
Monday, September 10, 12
Summary of procedural
justice
• So we have three procedures for getting a just
result:
• Perfect -- know what is just and how to get it
• Imperfect -- know what is just, but don’t know
how to get it
• Pure -- don’t know what is just, but can devise a
system that will guarantee a just result
Monday, September 10, 12