Amartya Sen's 'Idea of Justice' analysed.

It is manifestly unjust that a good looking person is more attractive to the opposite sex despite preferring her own. Since average looking people predominate in society, why don't we rise up and pass a law making it illegal for some people to be more sexually attractive than others? They must be made to handicap themselves so we have a level playing field.

Similar points may be made about sporting or academic excellence. We all need to study and to take physical exercise. Why should those with greater athletic ability get extra coaching and practice time and even specialist nutrients and physical therapy whereas we get nothing? How come Terence Tao got more Maths education than me despite my needing it more than that genius?

Why don't young people rise up against the manifest injustice involved in devoting more teaching and other resources to those who are already ahead in sports or academia?

The answer is that a feeling of manifest injustice- no matter how wide spread- does not matter. It may lead to prejudice and pettiness- we may revenge ourselves against the more favoured by describing them as sexless 'nerds' or brainless 'jocks'- but we don't feel we would personally benefit by any more extreme levelling measure or a legalistic approach to the underlying problem.

On the other hand, if we calculate that we will personally benefit from a change in the law, we may justify it as rectifying a 'manifest injustice' even if we don't believe any such injustice has actually occurred.

Amartya Sen takes a different view.  In the introduction to 'The Idea of Justice' he writes

'... the strong perception of manifest injustice applies to adult human beings as well (as children) . What moves us, reasonably enough, is not the realization that the world falls short of being completely just – which few of us expect – but that there are clearly remediable injustices around us which we want to eliminate. 

Human beings don't like seeing and smelling shit. They remove shit from their own habitation. They don't remove shit from the street though they may want the municipal authority to arrange for this to happen. However, a free rider problem arises. They may not wish to pay taxes to make this possible. Furthermore, they may object to any curtailment of their own right to cry 'guarde loo' & empty their chamber pot on to the street. For things to improve, it may be, some injustice- some violation of customary rights- might have to be imposed. The campaign against 'open defecation' in India is a contemporary example. Some people's customary right to relieve themselves by the roadside is being curtailed- sometimes coercively so.

Compared to human beings' reaction to seeing and smelling shit, their reaction to 'manifest injustice' is mild indeed. No doubt, in a thymotic society, daggers may be drawn if one party's customary entitlement to a larger share or priority in being served is not respected. This was required by an older notion linking Dike (Justice) to Thymos (Spiritedness).  But, this was because a failure to resort to violence has a signalling value. Thus a warrior who failed to avenge an injustice- for e.g. being denied one's due meed of honour- would be regarded as an 'outcaste' whose possessions could be plundered and whose dependents could be enslaved.

Thymotic Societies tended to be replaced by Civil Societies, with strong Institutions, as the Economy developed and the mode of production grew more complex.

In a commercial society, I am not greatly discomfited if you- by accident or design- serve me a smaller piece of your birthday cake despite my higher social standing.
On the other hand, if you supply my rival at a lower price than you do me- thus threatening the viability of my enterprise- I may raise a hue and cry against this 'manifest injustice'. However, unless I am able to join or create a coalition of a certain type, such effort would have been expended in vain.

Sen assumes that, as a species, we aren't 'homo economicus'. Rather we have a tropism to detect and eliminate 'manifest injustice' even if we get no personal benefit by it.

There is absolutely no evidence for this view.

This is evident enough in our day-to-day life, with inequities or subjugations from which we may suffer and which we have good reason to resent, but it also applies to more widespread diagnoses of injustice in the wider world in which we live. It is fair to assume that Parisians would not have stormed the Bastille, Gandhi would not have challenged the empire on which the sun used not to set, Martin Luther King would not have fought white supremacy in ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’, without their sense of manifest injustices that could be overcome. They were not trying to achieve a perfectly just world (even if there were any agreement on what that would be like), but they did want to remove clear injustices to the extent they could.

Parisians stormed the Bastille because they thought they would personally benefit- they believed they would have more bread and greater security from arbitrary arrest- Gandhians personally benefited by replacing White administrators and Business Houses with their own ; African Americans would personally benefit from Civil Rights and equitable treatment under the Law.

No doubt, some ideologues and phrase makers used Sen-type language. They spoke of the Parisian or the Gandhian or the Civil Rights Movement as being struggles against 'manifest injustice' of a universal type. This was an attempt at creating a larger mobilisation or Latour type 'enrollment' which, however, backfired because it brought into being a larger, more ruthless, counter-mobilisation. Eventually, each of these movements made it clear that they were not interested in battling 'manifest injustice' everywhere and anywhere but, rather, had limited and self-regarding aims.

 The identification of redressable injustice is not only what animates us to think about justice and injustice, it is also central, I argue in this book, to the theory of justice.

We know of theories of Justice dating back thousands of years. None were based on 'the identification of redressable injustice'. Rather, each and every theory assumed that injustice was idiographic, not nomothetic. The one who suffers the injustice makes a claim and presents evidence that he has been unfairly dealt with. 'Identification' occurs on the basis of verification of a self-reported claim.

If a 'theory of Justice' said 'we needn't bother with waiting for self-reported injustice. We can just identify such instances and remedy them'- it would be similar to a theory of Medicine which said 'we needn't bother with sick people who come to the Doctor asking for help. We can just decide who is sick and treat them as we like.'
Clearly such theories are utterly mad and entirely mischievous. A Sen-type Theory of Justice permits any arbitrary action under the rubric of 'redressing injustice' without any consultation with, or approval from, those suffering that injustice. A similar Theory of Medicine would permit taking healthy people and strapping them to a hospital bed or, as in fact has happened, confining sane and intelligent 'dissidents' in lunatic asylums.
We know that Central Planners can't run an Economy efficiently. There are chronic problems of information aggregation and preference revelation and computational complexity. Why does Sen think a Theory of Justice could be based on, not responding to self-reported injustice, but substantive 'identification' of 'redressable injustice'? Redressal is at least partly economic- in that it uses up scarce resources. We know no Central Planner can compute the relevant information efficiently. Ergo, the thing can't be, oughtn't to be, attempted.

As a matter of fact, not theory, the 'artificial reason' of jurisprudence has evolved methods of redressal based on verifying the damage suffered by the victims of injustice. A good example, Sen would know of, is  Pigford vs Glickman. African American farmers had been systematically discriminated against by the Dept. of Agriculture. They won billions of dollars in a class action suit. This incentivizes all involved in this field to rigorously weed out discriminatory practices or prejudiced employees.

Sen's approach could not have redressed actual injustice suffered. It would also have involved an inefficient, incentive incompatible, policy prescription which would have given rise to corrupt rent-seeking and more 'pork-barrel' politics.

It is noteworthy that the Posner type 'Law and Econ' school of Jurisprudence has no truck with Sen-tentious Theories of Justice. Sentiments don't matter. An abstract passion for Justice is not needed. What matters is that Judgments are incentive compatible and aware of Coasian solutions. Posner did change American Jurisprudence by his insistence that the Common Law was and ought to be efficient in this sense. Sen's work had no influence anywhere- save amongst rent seeking bureaucracies and interessement seeking Academics and NGOs whom we have all come to despise because their claim to be a sort of 'cordon sanitaire' against the likes of Trump have been shown to be bogus. Indeed, their 'Political Correctness' benefited nobody except the 'alt right' which thereby gained respectability.

Rawls drew a great deal on Sen's work and since Rawls was once considered a great philosopher, Sen's criticism of him may have some historical interest. Sadly, it misfires completely.

Consider Sen's three desiderata for a theory of Justice

1) First, a theory of justice that can serve as the basis of practical reasoning must include ways of judging how to reduce injustice and advance justice, rather than aiming only at the characterization of perfectly just societies – an exercise that is such a dominant feature of many theories of justice in political philosophy today.

This is quite false. A Judge may decide that a given situation is unjust- for example one where a debtor defaults- without knowing how to 'reduce injustice' or 'advance justice'.  Instead the Judge may appoint a Receiver, with expert knowledge, to tackle the problem.
It is not necessary for Judges to be expert in everything. They can delegate judicial functions to those with expert knowledge.

A characterization of a perfectly just society can be a Schelling focal solution to a coordination problem. Accepting such a characterization has a reputational benefit- even if on the basis of 'cheap talk'- and leads to less uncertainty and more beneficial, less costly because 'trust-based',  transactions. The institution of 'Costly signals' or 'Zahavi handicaps' can be even more profitable. In other words, human beings have found that 'ideal type' theories of Justice are useful. These may be Faith based. We can observe the commercial success of many sects which demand more from their votaries- e.g. tithing of income and compulsory missionary work. It appears, from Raj Chetty's research, that my children would have higher upward social mobility if they had grown up in a Mormon neighbourhood. I might not find all the teachings of that Church to be perfectly rational, but for purely rational, self-interested reasons I would want my kids to grow up in an atmosphere where Mormon values, not those of Mammon, predominate.

Sen's concern is only with what he sees as a hypertrophy of 'ideal type theories' in 'political philosophy' today. But, surely, that only obtained because of the tenure system and the greater longevity and bogus productivity of people like himself? Nobody cares about 'political philosophy' nowadays. The thing is a Credentialised Ponzi scheme based on absurd Availability Cascades.

Still, if an Academic- like Sen himself- can be relied upon to always say the same thing, he or she solves a coordination problem for the Media. He is a bankable 'talking head' always ready with a crisp 'sound bite' of a click bait type.

The problem with Sen's theory is that it suffers from 'dimensionality'- i.e. it is anything goes. This is useful to the 'talking head' who is confronted with evidence that his previous pronunciamentos were proved false because he can say 'well, if you look at my paper, I was actually saying something much more complex. What is important is that policy makers respect the rights of the poor and not bite off their heads and drink their blood'.

2) Second, while many comparative questions of justice can be successfully resolved – and agreed upon in reasoned arguments – there could well be other comparisons in which conflicting considerations are not fully resolved. It is argued here that there can exist several distinct reasons of justice, each of which survives critical scrutiny, but yields divergent conclusions.* Reasonable arguments in competing directions can emanate from people with diverse experiences and traditions, but they can also come from within a given society, or for that matter, even from the very same person

It doesn't matter if a 'comparative question of justice' is successfully resolved by reasoned argument. Consensus on a judicial matter may be a sign that an injustice is being endorsed. Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann has pointed out that the Sanhedrin had a rule against unanimity.  Moreover, a judicial system has 'a right to be wrong'. It is a system of 'artificial reason' and must evolve according to its own protocols on its own idiographic fitness landscape. This is the 'Regret minimizing' course.

'Reasonable arguments in competing directions' vitiate any useful function fora can serve. Suppose we organise a neighborhood meeting to discuss a problem with the new parking restrictions. A reasonable argument could be made that the real problem we are facing is our dependence on fossil fuel and the unsustainable nature of our life-styles. An even more reasonable argument could be made, drawing upon recent advances in physics and mathematics, that our existence is an illusion- reality is a hologram. I may wish to advance reasons why Sen's idea of Justice makes such extreme informational demands that cats must necessarily be spying on me. Stop it pussy! You don't understand that what I was doing to the vacuum cleaner wasn't sexual. I was trying to unblock its obstructed nozzle. That's what you saw. Please don't go blabbing to everybody in the neighborhood that I'm getting it on with my Dyson. Well, not till it is out of warranty, at any rate.

It is common-sense to exclude both reasonable and unreasonable arguments which add noise to signal. To solve our street's problem with the new parking restrictions, we've got to get the windbags to shut up. It may be that the drunken retired janitor who used to work for the Council knows whom we need to bribe to get the restriction lifted or rendered a nullity. The barrister's offer to fight the thing in Court turns out to be a riskier strategy. The ex-Councillor's claim to be able to influence his former protege, the current Mayor, too appears to be mere wishful thinking. So, we decide to get behind the drunken ex-janitor. Expert, idiographic, knowledge is what matters. Nomothetic 'reasonable arguments' are worthless or counter-productive- more particularly if advanced by rabid 'Social Justice warriors'.

Sen knows very well that the moment we add dimensions to the decision space then 'Agenda Control' gains salience. This is the prediction of McKelvey's Chaos theorem. It is also why electing ideological nutjobs is a bad idea. Sure, most of them are only pretending and soon become corrupt so everything becomes unidimensional- and denominated in dollar signs- once again. But this is not Justice- it is Corruption. Academics may provide a respectable 'front' for such shenanigans- but they too get corrupted. What Justice is about is people agreeing on a system of weighting, for idiographic reasons, based on expert knowledge of local conditions, such that a multi-dimensional decision space collapses into a scalable  'peak' or Schelling focal solution. Justice has a lot to do with Judging- not reasoning- and it is the essence of Judgment that its protocols are peculiar to itself- not shared with those of Reason.

When reasoning on an academic topic, it is considered good form to evaluate or even formulate arguments militating against one's intuition. In making a Judgment, however, only arguments which satisfy purely juristic protocols can be entertained.

Sen says-

There is a need for reasoned argument, with oneself and with others, in dealing with conflicting claims, rather than for what can be called ‘disengaged toleration’, with the comfort of such a lazy resolution as: ‘you are right in your community and I am right in mine’. Reasoning and impartial scrutiny are essential. However, even the most vigorous of critical examination can still leave conflicting and competing arguments that are not eliminated by impartial scrutiny. I shall have more to say on this in what follows, but I emphasize here that the necessity of reasoning and scrutiny is not compromised in any way by the possibility that some competing priorities may survive despite the confrontation of reason. The plurality with which we will then end up will be the result of reasoning, not of abstention from it

Sen belongs to an academic community. I am saying to him that, in his field, it is perfectly appropriate to say- 'well, there are good arguments on every side. Let us accept a plural view.' This is because his field is nomothetic and abstract and thus has very limited purchase on its ostensible subject matter which is highly idiographic and involves co-evolved complexity.

If information asymmetry is reduced in the market for such Academic Credentials as serve a signalling or screening purpose, then it is likely that 'vigorous critical examination, which yields no useful action-guiding result, will be winnowed out of paideia. Alternatively, it will become a subject of mockery. The word 'dunce' derives from the scholastic followers of Duns Scotus who, it was believed, argued about how many angels danced upon the point of a pin.

3) Third, the presence of remediable injustice may well be connected with behavioural transgressions rather than with institutional shortcomings.

Institutions exist to regulate behavior. A remedial injustice- e.g. a Professor who continually sexually harasses his students- reflects an institutional shortcoming because a behavioural transgression is occurring.

 Justice is ultimately connected with the way people’s lives go, and not merely with the nature of the institutions surrounding them.

Sen seems to think that Institutions may be good while people continue to behave badly. Thus, as a former Master of Trinity, he may have felt- 'Trinity is a sound Institution even though such and such Fellow is bad because he continually rubs up against and ejaculates upon the trouser legs of his colleagues.'  This is not a sensible view. We feel the Master of Trinity should take disciplinary action against Fellows of this description. Not to do so is an Institutional failing.

In contrast, many of the principal theories of justice concentrate overwhelmingly on how to establish ‘just institutions’, and give some derivative and subsidiary role to behavioural features.

A just Institution will fulfil its primary mission which is to ensure that those within its ambit behave properly. It would eliminate behavioural transgression in some manner- not necessarily punitive.

For example, John Rawls’s rightly celebrated approach of ‘justice as fairness’ yields a unique set of ‘principles of justice’ that are exclusively concerned with setting up ‘just institutions’ (to constitute the basic structure of the society), while requiring that people’s behaviour complies entirely with the demands of proper functioning of these institutions.

An institution which does not change behaviour is not functioning properly. It can't be 'just' in any sense. Sen thinks that there is some extra coercive power which has to be exercised to make people's behaviour compliant with 'the demands of proper functioning' of any given institution. This would only be the case if the Institution was 'unjust' in a specific Rawlsian sense or, to speak plainly, was poorly designed and not wholly fit for purpose.

In the approach to justice presented in this work, it is argued that there are some crucial inadequacies in this overpowering concentration on institutions (where behaviour is assumed to be appropriately compliant), rather than on the lives that people are able to lead. The focus on actual lives in the assessment of justice has many far-reaching implications for the nature and reach of the idea of justice.

The only 'crucial inadequacy' here is in the way Sen has chosen to read Rawls. Had he decided to read Rawls in a charitable manner- filling out lacunae using his own superior knowledge of Economics and Game theory- no inadequacy would have been found. Sen could just as easily have said- 'Rawlsian Institutions arise out of mechanism design based on a particular Revelation principle- one that coincides with what people would choose, on the basis of the Muth Rational Socio-Economic theory,  in 'the original position' behind a 'veil of ignorance'. Obviously, the fitness landscape for institutions is constituted by the people it is meant to serve. Thus institutions will have a fluid character. It follows that the 'lives people are able to lead' is what is truly important for Rawls.'


Sen's Idea of Justice assumes
1) people really care about 'manifest injustice' though there is no evidence that they do so at all. People don't like to see others suffering. They also don't want to suffer themselves. They are interested in stopping the suffering of other people and in insuring themselves against a like fate. This has nothing to with some abstract love of justice but rather has everything to do with a concrete love for themselves and people like themselves.

Sen says, 'We are engaged in making comparisons in terms of the advancement of justice whether we fight oppression (like slavery, or the subjugation of women), or protest against systematic medical neglect (through the absence of medical facilities in parts of Africa or Asia, or a lack of universal health coverage' etc. This is not true at all. Oxfam does not advertise saying 'there is injustice in this famine stricken country. Please give what you can.' Rather, it says, 'there is terrible hunger and disease here. Look how these people are suffering! Give!'

Sen had a Pakistani pal who got a UN job comparing 'Human Development' in different countries. Since then such UN and NGO jobs have proliferated. We now have indices comparing 'Human Rights' and 'Press Freedom' and 'Ease of doing Business' and 'Female empowerment' and so on. There are now quite a large number of academics teaching bureaucrats how to construct and manipulate these sorts of metrics. The Media used to play ball and so some Professor or UN rapporteur would appear on TV from time to time saying 'The U.K now scores below Ethiopia in Right to Food compliance' or 'the UK now has a lower score for academic freedom than Burkina Faso'.
What has been the upshot of these 'comparisons' in terms of the advancement of justice?' Trump got elected. Brexit occurred. The Rights based approach to everything under the Sun has been flushed down the toilet. The lie has been exposed that people like Sen and Nussbaum have really been enforcing a Canettian 'cordon sanitaire' against 'illiberal democracy' or 'Populist Fascism' or any other such bogeyman.

Sen's 'idea of Justice' was that it was a 'Preference Falsification' based Academo-Bureaucratic Availability Cascade. Thus, he and his ilk could gain money and fame and obligatory passage point status by pretending to care deeply about something everybody else would feel obliged to pretend to care deeply about. But, under democracy, people can vote for Trump or Farage or Le Pen or whoever they like so that pretence has to be dropped.

2) Justice isn't about judging but about reasoning. Thus it needn't actually decide anything in a time bound fashion. No doubt, Sen's Indian background is relevant here. Court cases drag on from decade to decade. Witnesses die or turn hostile. Thus, the public approves of extrajudicial killings and the use of third degree methods.

3) Institutions aren't about people at all. They exist in a separate Platonic space. Rather than saying 'this Institution is not fit for purpose, let us redesign it'; Sen says 'let us focus on the people rather than reform the Institutions'. Thus, if the Legal system is not fit for purposes because it takes thirty years to convict a gangster, let us forget about the Judiciary and concentrate on how the actions of gangsters prevents people from achieving well-being coz they are being hacked to death.

Sen's book advanced his reputation. He has done very well out of it. However, if- as a 'public intellectual' he had a duty towards students or other impressionable people- then he is guilty of culpa levis. He has looked after himself in an exemplary fashion but has shown no similar diligence towards the very people, he says, ought to be at the heart of any Idea of Justice.