George Schedler

I offer a way of classifying Confederate monuments and two ways of extracting meaning from these monuments. A few of them are racist on one of the two interpretations. Most of them, in the final analysis, implicitly acknowledge racial equality by extolling in African Americans the same virtues to which southern whites themselves aspired. Toppling those which seem racist entails serious difficulties, constitutional and philosophical. Additional interpretive material about the controversial ones is the more appropriate response.

I examine the blameworthiness of the resistance for Nazi reprisals in three morally disturbing cases which occurred in Nazi occupied Europe. I have organized my argument in the following way. After describing the cases, I propose a set of criteria for assessing the degree to which actors are blameworthy for the deaths of innocents. Using these criteria, I then explore the blameworthiness of the resistance members in these cases. I follow this analysis with an application of the doctrine of double effect. My conclusion that some resistance members are blameworthy using my criteria is confirmed by the application of the doctrine of double effect

Abstract I argue for the following, which I dub the ?fallibility syllogism?: (1) All systems of criminal punishment that inflict suffering on the innocent are unjust from a desert-based, retributivist point of view. (2) All past or present human systems of criminal punishment inflict suffering on the innocent. (3) Therefore, all such human systems of criminal punishment are unjust from a desert-based, retributivist point of view. My argument for the first premise is organized in the following way. I define what a human system of punishment is. I offer a distinction between retributive and utilitarian approaches to punishment. I distinguish between weak retributivism embodied in the second premise and strong retributivism, which I argue is the basis for the weak version. I argue that on retributivist grounds, each case of punishment is just when it matches the seriousness of the wrongdoing of the offender and that systems of punishment are just from a retributivist point of view when there are no exceptions to this match-up. In making my case, I will use Kant's retributivism as the version of my choice, so I will spend some time showing that recent reinterpretations of Kant (arguing that he was not a thoroughgoing retributivist), even if they are correct, are consistent with my view. Ultimately, however, I argue that the better view is that Kant was a thoroughgoing retributivist.

Contemporary white Americans cannot meaningfully ask forgiveness from present-day African Americans for slavery, because such a group apology does not have the mental state needed to communicate regret and intend that listeners forgive the group. Even if the requisite mental state were present, contemporary white Americans are not responsible for the wrong and cannot apologize for wrongs for which they are not responsible. Additionally, such a purported apology is not directed to the victims of the wrong but instead seeks forgiveness from present-day citizens who were not enslaved and could not therefore accept such an apology on behalf of the slaves.

In the first half of this century, Anglo-American moral philosophers concerned themselves with the vexing question of whether legal officials could deliberately “punish” the innocent and whether a utilitarian justification for such a practice is possible. Interest in this topic waned after Rawls drew a crucial distinction in his article, “Two Concepts of Rules,” between two kinds of systems for dealing with wrongdoing. One was legal punishment, as we understand it; the other was the practice of ‘telishment’, in which the officials, as Rawls said, “have authority to arrange a trial for the condemnation of an innocent man whenever they are of the opinion that doing so would be in the best interests of society.” A utilitarian justification for such an arrangement is most unlikely, Rawls claimed, because of the very great risks that such an institution might misfire.

Suppose there arose a racist group which began terrorizing Arab-Americans. They always scrawled a Star of David wherever they committed their crimes, and they conducted parades in which they carried the Israeli flag. Suppose further that most Americans, but not a small group of American Jews, developed a strong, widespread, and long-standing association between the Star of David and racism. Finally, suppose someone suggested that those Jews who persisted in displaying the Israeli flag in their synagogues refrain from doing so, on the grounds that, “[i]f it must be displayed, then why not display it instead in museums or library kiosks, accompanied by explanations of its historical significance and its connection to racism?”

We argue in this essay that any society that organizes itself to punish criminals should in justice consider itself strictly liable to punish only those who are guilty in fact of the crimes for which they are punished. We argue that justice, not utility, is the basis of the obligation society has not to punish the innocent and that any society that is just would bind itself by statute to compensate the innocents it punishes by mistake. We hope to have made it evident that when the justice of criminal punishment is the issue justice and strict liability are not incompatible; rather, we hope to have shown that one does not understand the nature of justice unless one recognizes that society is strictly liable and therefore owes compensation when, through no fault of its own, it punishes the innocent

To protect what it deems fundamental rights, the Supreme Court strictly scrutinizes legislation that impinges on these rights. The Court views such legislation as a means to some end the legislation seeks to accomplish. The Court requires that the statute be neither overinclusive nor underinclusive; the legislation may not affect more people than necessary to achieve its end, nor is the statute permitted to leave some people out in achieving its end.I argue that when legislation imposes burdens, its underinclusiveness is irrelevant, and that when it dispenses rewards its overinclusiveness is irrelevant, because those affected by the statute areex hypothesi deserving. One commits thetu quoque fallacy when one tries to infer that those affected by the law are undeserving from the fact that some deserving individuals were not affected by the statute.

CONCLUSIONSocial justice is most clearly satisfied by a system of Divine rewards and punishments: an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly just Being could determine in each case how much effort was made and effect the appropriate distribution of rewards and punishments. A correct understanding of social justice naturally leads us to suppose that there is an afterlife, a God, a free choice — though it is logically possible at least that social justice could be satisfied in some future human society.There will still be those who have their doubts about the correctness of any view according to which justice cannot be attained by fallible creatures who have an incomplete knowledge of one another's behaviour. But, surely, these doubts are not sufficient to discredit my view. There is no a priori reason for rejecting such a view. There is nothing about our use of the term ‘justice’ and its cognates which implies that such a view is mistaken. To the contrary, there are widely held religious views, Christian as well as non‐Christian, which take this view quite seriously. If there is no a priori reason for rejecting this view, then there must be some independent reason for rejecting it. In other words, we need some independent reasons for believing that social justice can be attained by fallible creatures with limited knowledge. The mere fact that we might feel uncomfortable with my theory is not reason enough to reject it.Finally, those who do experience this discomfort might ask themselves whether such discomfort stems from their moral experience or whether they are simply intent on finding justice in imperfect human institutions