Jessica Flanigan

Nozick is known for defending the entitlement theory of distributive justice. The entitlement theory prohibits most kinds of redistribution by public officials on the grounds that, insofar as people are entitled to their property, redistribution violates those entitlements. In his later work, Nozick seemed to walk back his endorsement of the entitlement theory, writing that the theory was inadequate because it failed to account for the symbolic significance of state action. There, he suggested that public officials might be entitled to tax people for the benefit of the needy as a way of collectively expressing the political community’s care for the poor. In this essay, I reconstruct Nozick’s initial defense of the entitlement theory in a way that preserves the initial spirit of his argument while making the theory consistent with his later remarks about symbolic values and the importance of caring for the poor.

Parental leave, daycare, and transfer programs are “the three mainstays” of family policy. Parental leave policies require that employers offer parental leave to new mothers or parents. Public daycare programs provide parents with childcare. Tax and transfer programs offer cash support or in‐kind benefits to families with children. For each kind of policy, social scientists disagree about the effects of child welfare policies. Public officials must make trade‐offs between considerations of efficiency, fairness, equality, and freedom when designing and enforcing family policies.

I greatly appreciate the insightful commentaries of Adrienne Martin, James Stacey Taylor and Nir Eyal. Here I will try to clarify a few points in response. My goal is to show that prescription requirements entail a degree of paternalism that is inconsistent with the value of medical autonomy. The commentators are right to suggest that I further clarify how I understand the value of autonomy. I agree with Martin that the most compelling justification for the value of autonomy comes from Kantian ethics.

In this essay, we argue that liberal egalitarians cannot maintain their commitment to liberalism alongside a commitment to distributive egalitarianism that is, the view that justice requires the state to bring about a broadly egalitarian distribution of resources or welfare. Nearly all liberal political philosophers, including those who reject capitalism, endorse rights of personal property and occupational choice. We argue that respect for these rights, properly specified, precludes the state from enforcing a particular distribution of goods to achieve egalitarian aims.

This chapter offers a number of arguments in defense of the claim that tax evasion is morally permissible. First, an individual can do more good by evading taxes and allocating the spared income to effective charities than by paying taxes. Second, tax revenue is often used to support unjust policies. Third, the tax system frequently treats people unjustly. For these reasons, it’s presumptively permissible for an individual to evade taxation. Critics may object that tax evasion is morally wrong either because evasion is harmful, individuals ought to comply with democratically enacted laws or egalitarian political institutions, or because people are not entitled to the taxed income. After responding to these objections, the chapter closes by arguing that, while tax evasion is often morally permitted, it is not morally required.

This chapter argues that public officials should usually refrain from imposing penalties on people who engage in risky behaviour during pandemics. It first makes the case that prohibitive public health policies, such as mandates and lockdowns, are often unfairly enforced, either because these policies interfere with people who are not liable to be interfered with or because they are excessively burdensome. Second, the chapter argues that these policies can also be counterproductive to the goal of promoting public health and wellbeing. Third, it claims that public officials also lack the standing to enforce prohibitive public health policies to the extent that they are also enforcing policies that prolong or exacerbate a pandemic. Fourth, it discusses circumstances where a prohibitive approach might be justified. To close, the chapter discusses the broader implications of these arguments for other ethical questions related to public health policy.

When listeners consider a speaker's social identity or standpoint as evidence of their credibility on questions related to social issues, this practice is usually epistemically counterproductive. Though people's standpoints are relevant for understanding what it's like to occupy a social position, the practice of boosting or blocking a speaker's credibility on the basis of their standpoint is often misleading. The expectation that speakers will reveal their standpoints and that listeners will consider the speaker's standpoints when evaluating their claims is also burdensome for speakers who would rather conceal information about their standpoints.

Proponents of leaderless management defend this approach as a way of making workplaces more egalitarian. Leaderless management is an organizational style that involves granting workers more autonomy, and it often involves more opportunities for democratic participation at work. In a similar vein, many egalitarian philosophers also argue that workplaces should be arranged democratically in order to reduce or eliminate workers’ subordination. In response to these calls for more participatory power at work, I argue that workplace democracy is only instrumentally valuable and that it will not necessarily promote equality at work. I then suggest that workers could gain more freedom from subordination and domination if workplaces adopt policies that give them more control over the terms and conditions of their labor, such as incentive pay, heightened transparency, and telework options.

A libertarian approach to healthcare is generally favorable to market-based solutions and skeptical of centrally planned governmental solutions to public health and medicine. Libertarians oppose paternalistic restrictions on liberty, such as prohibitions on dangerous drugs or behavior. Libertarians are also especially cognizant of the ways that governmental regulation can stifle innovation and make healthcare more costly. Many libertarians emphasize the moral importance of bodily rights as a constraint on public policy making. Yet libertarians may disagree about what it means to respect bodily rights. For example, libertarians disagree about whether and how public officials should enforce policies that protect public goods or prevent market failure. Libertarians also disagree about questions related to abortion. In this chapter I survey libertarian approaches to public health and healthcare in five areas—clinical ethics, healthcare policy, public health, medical markets and regulation, and human enhancement.

Sexual harassment violates workers’ rights when they did not consent to work in an environment that exposed them to harassment. Sexual harassment violates rights because it is a form of deception. If workers are informed that their workplace will involve sexual harassment beforehand, then they cannot claim that their rights against sexual harassment were violated. Unlike alternative explanations for the wrongfulness of sexual harassment, this explanation does not implicitly assume an overly demanding theory of rights and it does not rule out the possibility that sex work could be morally permissible.

In this chapter, I defend the decriminalization of sex work. I argue that sex work should be treated like other kinds of work, such as nursing, massage therapy, performance arts, and marriage counseling. Though the criminalization of sex work may reduce the buying and selling of sex in a political community, this is not a legitimate goal for public policy because it is not wrong for people to pay for sex or to sell sexual services. Criminalization does not eliminate the sex industry, but it makes it more dangerous for workers and their clients.

Leadership introduces distinctive risks of ethical failure. These risks are often associated with the heightened responsibilities of leadership and the necessary inequality that leading a group often involves. But people who are prone to ethical failure are also prone to self-selection into leadership positions. In order to understand and prevent ethical failure in leadership, it is not enough to take steps to address and prevent ethical failure among existing leaders. Rather, avoiding ethical failure may also require rethinking the ways that leaders are selected.

This chapter describes anarchism and argues that property rights are at least partly conventional, and that anarchists should be concerned about the non-consensual enforcement of property conventions that exceed the protection of people’s natural property rights. It shows that a basic income is one way to compensate people for the enforcement of property conventions. A basic income could provide people with the assurance that their natural rights will be protected to a greater extent than existing property conventions do, and it would make space for people to live in society while avoiding the persistent threats from public officials that people in poverty face. If people consented to the enforcement of a set of property conventions, then it would be permissible for public officials to enforce those property conventions. A more serious objection, from an anarchist’s perspective, is that a basic income policy is incompatible with open borders and the moral demands of global justice.

This chapter defends a moral presumption against the governmental provision of services. This non-instrumentalist defense of privatization contrasts with non-instrumentalist defenses of the governmental provision of services and instrumentalist arguments in favor of governmental or private provision of service. The author argues that non-instrumental normative considerations favor privatization because people cannot consent to the governmental provision of services and all else equal it is morally better if people consent to provide and receive services. Furthermore, without citizens’ consent, governments do not have the authority to tax citizens in order to provide services. And in most circumstances, citizens do not have enforceable duties to provide public goods to their compatriots so it is wrong for public officials to coerce them to do so..

Jessica Flanigan defends a broadly Kantian approach to disability and disability rights that also emphasizes the importance of considering disabled people’s experiences. Flanigan begins with the claim that it is a mistake to define disabilities with reference to a theory of well-being because whether a person has the physical conditions associated with disability is a separate question from whether it is bad to have those conditions. She then makes the case whatever the relationship between physical disability and well-being, physical ability status as such should rarely influence how people treat each other or the kinds of people that are created. Throughout, Flanigan emphasizes the importance of deferring to people’s testimony about how they experience physical disability rather than settling questions about disability rights and procreative ethics based on theoretical assumptions about the relationship between physical disability and well-being.

I argue that people's bodily rights extend beyond the mere right to refuse medical treatment and also include the right to choose and access medical treatment. I review this argument, which I defend elsewhere, in section 1. There, I argue that the same considerations that favor the doctrine of informed consent also support patients' rights ofself-medication, which include the rights to access and use pharmaceuticals without a prescription or approval. I argue that self-medication ought to be understood as a civil rights issue and that patients are justified in resisting unjust drug policies and advocating for reform. More generally, some of the arguments against medical paternalism also challenge other paternalistic public health policies, such as soda bans and antismoking policies. I address the ethics of pharmaceutical regulation, manufacturing, and distribution Section 2, where I consider the perspectives of other institutional actors. I argue that policies that prevent patients from accessing potentially lifesaving or beneficial treatment are unjust laws that kill people, whereas drug manufacturers do not unjustly kill patients by selling dangerous drugs as long as they disclose all known risks. Manufacturers are therefore morally entitled to market drugs to patients, and officials should not censor pharmaceutical advertising. And though patients have rights of self-medication, physicians and providers are not required to facilitate patients' risky treatment decisions. Legal barriers to treatment, including occupational licensing policies, are unjust, but officials also should not enforce legal requirements to provide treatment. I then consider whether the fact that taxpayers provide citizens with health care can justify limiting people's rights to make risky or unhealthy choices. In response, I argue that people are not liable to be preemptively coerced into making healthy decisions even if taxpayers will predictably be required to pay for their unhealthy choices.

Many of the leaders we admire are distinguished by their authenticity. Leadership scholars emphasize the importance of authenticity on the grounds that authentic leaders are more ethical and effective than inauthentic leaders. Or, authentic leaders are at least perceived as more ethical and effective. Yet we can imagine leaders who are authentic, but ineffective or unethical. Other leaders are inauthentic, but very ethical and effective. What distinguishes an authentic leader is that the way she presents herself to others reflects her personal commitments and character. Authentic leaders are genuine and straightforward in their interactions with people. Is there anything to be said for authenticity for its own sake? In this chapter, I argue that authenticity is a virtue. By this I mean that all else being equal, it is morally better for a person to have an authentic disposition. I also will show that authenticity is an especially important virtue for leaders.

Policies that are designed to promote public health should not use coercion to discourage unhealthy decision making. Though public health officials may be experts about medical regularities in a population, they are not experts about which dietary or lifestyle choices are best for particular indiviuals. Experts in regulatory agencies also face several political incentives that undermine their ability effectively to promote health at the population level. Furthermore, without consent, coercive public health policies are extremely difficult to justify to citizens. For these reasons, states should not enforce coercive public health policies, even if the state subsidizes citizens' healthcare. Many of the same reasons to reject coercive public health regulations are also reasons to reject other coercive paternalistic policies.

Grammatical errors and orthographic mishaps are often played for laughs, but this subtle sanctioning by the sticklerocracy can have real social consequences too. Attention to prescriptive spelling and grammar rules is insidious and harmful. As Jessica Flanigan argues in Why It’s OK to Have Bad Spelling and Grammar, grammarianism often maintains hierarchies, entrenches the advantages of privileged groups, and imposes arbitrary barriers to knowledge production and innovation. For example, the stigmatization of bad spelling and grammar disadvantages linguistic minorities, non-native speakers, and people with disabilities. Spelling and grammar norms are also frequently arbitrary and unnecessary. The petty grammandos among us, who cling to pedantic linguistic conventions, are standing in the way of innovative forms of communication and efficient speech, such as the emoji ☺. For these reasons, Flanigan argues that bad spelling and grammar are OK. It’s time to break free from the tyranny of the grammilitia in the name of comprehension and creativity. As long as speakers and writers can effectively communicate to charitable listeners and readers, people shouldn’t care about bad spelling and grammar.

Many leadership researchers aim to advise organizations about how to select and develop ethical leaders, to tell business educators how to teach people to be ethical, or to describe ethical leadership. Yet for these tasks, empirical approaches that address questions about ethics with surveys, experiments, and case studies are insufficient on their own in answering the question, “what should a leader do?” I first argue that descriptive approaches to leadership ethics, such as conceptual analysis, case studies, survey research, and lab experiments, cannot on their own tell us what a leader ought to do when he or she faces a morally difficult circumstance. I then show that the question “what should a leader do?” can be addressed through philosophical analysis. Though philosophers disagree about the nature of morality, most agree that there are truths about morality and that we can make progress in learning about how to live and lead ethically. To close, I consider and respond to the objection that philosophical approaches to leadership ethics are intolerant or authoritarian. I conclude that philosophical approaches to leadership ethics are essential to our evolving understanding of what a leader ought to do.

Social egalitarians should rethink their support for democratic political institutions. The ideal social egalitarian institutional arrangement would be a stateless society. If it were feasible to live without a state, then citizens' subservience to a state could not be justified on the grounds that people were able to influence what the state did. Unfortunately, a stateless society is infeasible. As a matter of non-ideal theory, social egalitarians generally support democratic institutions. But there are four reasons that social egalitarians should not support democracy. First, many of the arguments that social egalitarians cite in favor of democracy appeal to an ideal of democracy, but if ideal institutional arrangements were feasible, then a stateless society would be better. Second, social egalitarians would not support the use of democratic procedures to make collective decisions within the context of private relationships if people could instead decide separately. Third, democratic societies entrench status inequalities between citizens and non-citizens and, at times, between majority groups and minority groups. Though democracy people one kind of equal status, it institutionalizes and intensifies other forms of oppression. Fourth, relative to the status quo, relational egalitarians ought to support less governmental control over people's lives, and that means less democracy.

This chapter argues that political and business leaders should adhere to the same moral standards as everyone else, a position that the author terms Evaluative Consistency. According to this view, there is a single set of moral principles applicable to all individuals, regardless of their leadership roles. This contrasts with Evaluative Exceptionalism, the belief that leadership ethics should be evaluated by a different set of moral standards that do not apply to ordinary decision-makers. The chapter begins by outlining the case for Exceptionalism, which holds that the unique moral challenges faced by leaders necessitate different moral rules, or that the context in which leaders operate justifies a separate ethical framework – or even that leaders may be exempt from moral requirements altogether. Next, the author argues in favor of Consistency and against Exceptionalism, suggesting that the same arguments used to reject Exceptionalism in just war theory should also apply to leaders in business ethics and political philosophy. Subsequent sections address objections to Consistency, including its implications in “dirty hands” scenarios and its compatibility with the distinctive duties of leaders, such as fiduciary responsibilities and confidentiality. Finally, the chapter discusses how Consistency impacts the study and teaching of ethical leadership, concluding with a call to apply uniform moral standards across all roles, including leadership.

In this essay, I argue that any legal framework that addresses sexual transmission of HIV should be sensitive to the way that culpability can be mitigated by moral and factual ignorance. Though it is wrong to transmit HIV, public officials should be wary of criminalising transmission because people with HIV may be excused if they suffer from blameless moral or factual ignorance. I begin with the widely shared premise that blameless ignorance about one’s HIV status is an excuse for sexual transmission of infections. I then extend this premise to other kinds of non-moral ignorance about HIV. Next, I argue that blameless moral ignorance also excuses transmission of HIV. There is some evidence of significant blameless non-moral and moral ignorance about HIV transmission. In these cases, transmission is excused. In light of the presence of moral and non-moral ignorance about HIV, I conclude that public health officials should encourage moral deliberation about HIV transmission and also that criminal penalties for HIV transmission are unwarranted even in some cases of knowing or intentional transmission.

In this essay, I argue that prescription drug laws violate patients' rights to self-medication. Patients have rights to self-medication for the same reasons they have rights to refuse medical treatment according to the doctrine of informed consent (DIC). Since we should accept the DIC, we ought to reject paternalistic prohibitions of prescription drugs and respect the right of self-medication. In section 1, I frame the puzzle of self-medication; why don't the same considerations that tell in favour of informed consent also justify a right of self-medication? In section 2, I show that the prescription drug system was historically motivated by paternalism. In section 3, I outline the justifications for the DIC in more detail. I show that consequentialist, epistemic, and deontic considerations justify the DIC. In sections 4–6, I argue that these considerations also justify rights of self-medication. I then propose that rights of self-medication require non-prohibitive prescription policies in section 7. I consider two objections in sections 8 and 9: that patients ought not to make medically risky or deadly decisions, and that unrestricted access to prescription-grade pharmaceuticals would result in widespread misuse and abuse. Section 10 concludes

The ideological nature of public health is a problem for the profession. Ideological uniformity in the field of public health undermines scholars’ and officials’ legitimacy and compromises their ability effectively to prevent death and disease. I first provide some evidence that public health is ideological and then I argue that the ideology of public health is counterproductive. Additionally, public officials are also likely to violate people’s rights in trying to advance their ideology through public health policy. In light of these moral considerations against the ideological nature of public health, there are compelling reasons for people to resist the expanding scope of public health insofar as it consists in the further imposition of this counterproductive and harmful ideology. I therefore conclude that the profession would be more effective and just if public health officials and scholars focused more narrowly on improving health outcomes instead of promoting their broader ideological agenda through public health policy.

This paper describes public reason communitarianism, a theory which is isomorphic to public reason liberalism. It contains the same internal diversity and debates, and the same fundamental structure and argumentation as public reason liberalism. However, while public reason liberals believe that public reason will converge on liberal outcomes, hypothetical public reason communitarians hold that public reason converges, for largely the same reason, on communitarianism. From the outside, there seems to be no good grounds for preferring one over the other. We offer this theory as a challenge for public reason liberalism, as it poses a dilemma. If public reason liberals admit the coherence of the communitarian version of their view, then public reason does not uniquely generate liberal outcomes, and indeed in the real world probably fails to justify liberalism, even to all reasonable people committed to public reason. If liberals want to deny the coherence of the view, though, it seems they must rely on question-begging liberal premises or question-begging interpretations of key concepts in the public reason view. Thus, contrary to their self-understanding, their view is ideological after all.

University administrators should not enforce speech codes because speech codes are generally counterproductive to a university’s educational mission. In making the case against campus speech codes, we consider and reply to four of the most prominent arguments in favor of restricting student speech. These arguments appeal to the values of harm prevention, inclusive education, relational equality, and the overall promotion of free speech. We show that speech restrictions do not effectively promote these values. We conclude that campus administrators should uphold protections for freedom of expression on college campuses in order to promote a more egalitarian and inclusive learning environment.

In this essay we argue against preventing people from amassing extreme wealth via increased taxation. The first argument in favor of such a proposal, recently advanced by Ingrid Robeyns (2018), states that billionaires’ resources would be better spent addressing morally important goals such as meeting disadvantaged people’s needs and solving collective action problems. In response to this claim, we argue that billionaires are typically in a better position to benefit the poor and to solve collective action problems than public officials. The second argument in favor of preventing extreme wealth accumulation, advanced by Robeyns and Robert Reich (2018), states that billionaires have an inappropriate amount of influence in public life, which undermines political equality. We argue that corporate leaders tend to be more accountable to their fellow citizens than public officials. We then consider and criticize the objection that billionaires’ success is typically a result of public investment, which entitles public officials to enforce taxes that demand a return on the public investment.