Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen

When collective decisions should be made democratically, which people form the relevant demos? Many theorists think this question is an embarrassment to democratic theory: because any decision about who forms the demos must be made democratically by the right demos, which itself must be democratically constituted and so on ad infinitum; and because neither the concept of democracy, nor our reasons for caring about democracy, determine who should form the demos. Having distinguished between these three versions of the demos problem, we argue that each of them can be solved.

A national opt-out system of post-mortem donation of scarce organs is preferable to an opt-in system. Unfortunately, the former system is not always feasible, and so in a recent JME article we canvassed the possibility of offering people a tax break for opting-in as a way of increasing the number of organs available for donation under an opt-in regime. Muireann Quigley and James Stacey Taylor criticize our proposal. Roughly, Quigley argues that our proposal is costly and, hence, is unlikely to be implemented, while Taylor contests our response to a Titmuss-style objection to our scheme. In response to Quigley, we note that our proposal’s main attraction lies in gains not reflected in the figures presented by Quigley and that the mere fact that it is costly does not imply that it is unfeasible. In response to Taylor, we offer some textual evidence in support of our interpretation of Taylor and responds to his favoured interpretation of the Titmuss-style objection that many people seem to want to donate to charities even if they can deduct their donations from their income tax. Finally, we show why our views do not commit us to endorsing a free organ-market

This introduction discusses some of the background assumptions and recent developments of the current refugee crisis. In this issue, the crisis is not viewed as a primarily European, Western or even Syrian, Afghan, or Iraqi crisis, but as a global crisis that raises complex ethical and political challenges for all humanity. The contributions to this thematic issue discuss a variety of questions relating to the rights and duties of different actors involved in the refugee crisis, and assess some of the suggested responses to handling the crisis.

The all-affected principle is a widely accepted solution to the problem of constituting the demos. Despite its popularity, a basic question in relation to the principle has not received much attention: why does the fact that an individual is affected by a certain decision ground a right to inclusion in democratic decision-making about that matter? An answer to this question must include a reason that explains why an affected individual should be included because she is affected. We identify three such reasons in the literature – to wit, interest protection, self-government and welfare – and show why they all fail. We then propose two alternative reasons, equal relations and fairness, and show why they are also deficient. Surprisingly, the all-affected principle then appears groundless, which supports withholding belief in the all-affected principle or(/and) investing future research in identifying the thus-far unidentified reason why being affected grounds a claim to inclusion.

Many philosophers analyzing standing to blame have argued that a hypocrite can lack standing to blame someone even if what that person did is blameworthy, and that standingless, hypocritical blame is _pro tanto_ morally wrongful. Philosophers have yet to address the issue of standing to forgive. In this article, I defend two main claims. I argue first that _if_ these two claims about blame are true, _then_ so are the two corresponding claims about forgiveness: a hypocritical forgiver can lack standing to forgive someone for an act even if there are reasons to hold that this act is forgivable, and standingless, hypocritical forgiveness is _pro tanto_ morally wrongful. I then argue, separately, that these two claims about forgiveness _are_ true.

Many theorists think that discrimination is wrongful because it involves treating discriminatees as if they have a lower moral status than others when in fact all people are moral equals. However, there are strong reasons, expounded by Peter Singer and others, to doubt that all people are indeed moral equals. While it may turn out that, ultimately, these reasons can be shown to be unsound, we cannot rule out the possibility that we are not all moral equals. If we are not, discrimination cannot be wrong because it involves failure to treat people as moral equals. With this in mind, I propose two anti-inegalitarian accounts of the wrongness of discrimination – “anti-inegalitarian” rather than “egalitarian” because, strictly speaking, they do not posit equality of status, and “anti-inegalitarian” rather than “inegalitarian” because they reject almost all (and in the case of one of them, all) inequalities in status. These two accounts have many of the attractions of the moral equality account. Being immune to Singerian doubts about moral equality is also a strength of the accounts because it means that they are not hostage to the outcome of the intricate debate over moral equality. Lastly, the anti-inegalitarian accounts I propose are in some ways preferable to the moral equality account because they have certain implications for the wrongness of discrimination that an account given in terms of moral equality does not have, and which egalitarians so far have not theorized.

Many ethical theorists believe that a given distribution of healthcare is morally justified only if (1) it is cost-effective and (2) it does not discriminate against older adults and disabled people. However, if (3) cost-effectiveness involves maximizing the number of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) added by a given unit of healthcare resource, or cost, it seems the pursuit of cost-effectiveness will inevitably discriminate against older adults and disabled patients. I show why this trilemma is harder to escape than some theorists think. We cannot avoid it by using age- or disability-weighted QALY scores, for example. I then explain why there is no sense of “discrimination” on which discrimination isbothunjust, and thus something healthcare rationing must avoid,andsomething cost-effective healthcare rationing inevitably involves. I go on to argue that many of the reasons we have for not favoring rationing that maximizes QALYs outside the healthcare context apply in healthcare as well. Thus, claim (1) above is dubious.

On 24 July 2022, the landmark decision Roe v. Wade (1973), that secured a right to abortion for decades, was overruled by the US Supreme Court. The Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organisation severely restricts access to legal abortion care in the USA, since it will give the states the power to ban abortion. It has been claimed that overruling Roe will have disproportionate impacts on women of color and that restricting access to abortion contributes to or amounts to structural racism. In this paper, we consider whether restricting abortion access as a consequence of overruling Roe could be understood as discrimination against women of color (and women in general). We argue that banning abortion is indirectly discriminatory against women of color and directly (but neither indirectly, nor structurally) discriminatory against women in general.

Algorithm-assisted decision procedures—including some of the most high-profile ones, such as COMPAS—have been described as unfair because they compound injustice. The complaint is that in such procedures a decision disadvantaging members of a certain group is based on information reflecting the fact that the members of the group have already been unjustly disadvantaged. I assess this reasoning. First, I distinguish the anti-compounding duty from a related but distinct duty—the proportionality duty—from which at least some of the intuitive appeal of the former illegitimately derives. Second, I distinguish between different versions of the anti-compounding duty, arguing that, on some versions, uses of algorithm-assisted decision procedures rarely clash with the anti-compounding duty. Third, drawing on examples of algorithm-assisted decision procedures, I present three objections to the idea that there is a reason not to compound injustice. The most important of these is that one can compound injustice in a non-disrespectful way, and that the wrongfulness of non-disrespectfully compounding injustice is fully explained by the proportionality duty.

This paper expounds and defends a relational egalitarian account of the moral wrongfulness of vote markets according to which such markets are incompatible with our relating to one another as equals qua people with views on what we should collectively decide. Two features of this account are especially interesting. First, it shows why vote markets are objectionable even in cases where standard objections to them, such as the complaint that they result in inequality in opportunity for political influence across rich and poor people, are inapplicable. Second, it specifies the sense in which, politically speaking, we should relate as equals, and in doing provides a richer version of recent relational egalitarian accounts of the ideal of democracy.

In a series of excellent, recent papers, Deborah Hellman expounds the intuitively appealing idea that we have a duty not to compound injustice. Roughly, one compounds injustice when facts that obtain as a result of prior injustice form part of one’s reason for imposing further disadvantages on the victims of this prior injustice. This article identifies several complexities and problems motivating various amendments to Hellman’s formulation of the duty not to compound injustice. Critically, it argues that the intuitions she and others have sought to explain in terms of the duty not to compound injustice are better explained by the duty not to cause additional harm to people who are already unjustly worse off – perhaps in conjunction with a duty not to implicate ourselves in injustice.

A policy indirectly discriminates against a group, G, if, and only if: it does not reflect an objectionable mental state regarding the members of G; it disadvantages members of G; the disadvantages are disproportionate; and G is a socially salient group. I argue that indirect discrimination is not non-instrumentally morally wrong. Clearly, if it were, that would be because it harms members of G disproportionately, i.e., in virtue of features and. Harming members of a group disproportionately does appear non-instrumentally wrong. But it is not easy to provide a plausible explanation for the kind of harm and disproportionality involved here that vindicates this initial appearance. This does not mean the concept of indirect discrimination should be jettisoned. It was originally a legal concept, and in closing I briefly suggest that in law it plays a valuable role, even if it is not a genuine moral category. Legal prohibition is an unreliable guide to what is morally wrong, but it is not supposed to be that anyway.

This is an interview by the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics with Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Xavier Ramos, and Dirk Van de gaer, conducted as part of a roundtable on the philosophy and economics of discrimination and inequality. The interview covers the concepts of discrimination and inequality; the current state of the literature on measuring discrimination and inequality; the relevance of measuring discrimination and inequality for policymaking; and the future of measuring discrimination and inequality.

On Pogge’s view, we —people living in rich countries— do not just allow the global poor to die. Rather, we interfere with them in such a way that we make them die on a massive scale. If we did the same through military aggression against them, surely, it would be permissible for these people to wage war on us to prevent this. Suppose Pogge’s analysis of the causes of global poverty is correct, and assume the moral permissibility of self-defence by poor people in the hypothetical military action scenario just mentioned. If these assumptions are correct, poor countries could start just and, even possibly, morally permissible redistributive wars against us provided various additional conditions are met. To avoid misunderstanding, I should stress that my main claim is the conditional equivalence claim, namely that if Pogge’s analysis of the causes of global poverty is correct, our relation to poor countries is morally equivalent to one in which we each year killed many of the global poor by military means. I do not claim (i) that Pogge’s analysis is correct; (ii) that, as a matter of fact, it is morally permissible for poor countries to wage redistributive wars against rich countries; (iii) that it is not the case that anything that is impermissible for poor countries to do in the latter situation involving military aggression —e. g. deliberately targeting rich civilians— is impermissible in redistributive wars as well.

Philosophers analyzing standing to blame have argued that in view of a blamer’s own fault she can lack standing to blame another for an act even if the act is blameworthy and that standingless, hypocritical blame is pro tanto morally wrongful. The bearing of these conclusions on standing to praise is yet to receive the attention it deserves. I defend two claims. The first is the conditional claim that if and are true, so are and. The latter are: a praiser can lack the standing to praise herself for an act even if that act is praiseworthy and standingless, hypocritical praise is pro tanto morally wrongful. So I am suggesting that facts about standing to blame reflect more general facts about standing to hold responsible. The second is the claim that and are true.

Fabre defends a human rights‐focused cosmopolitan theory of peace. One would expect that, given this view, she would be in favour of human rights‐promoting annexations by liberal states. However, she distances herself from this view, adopting the common‐sense view that annexing states ‘act ultra vires’. I argue that her core cosmopolitan view motivates a different and, in principle, much more positive view of four types of annexations. In the course of defending this view, I take a critical look at her appeal to perverse moral incentives and the notion of a cosmopolitan ethos.