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On Fairness and Claims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2012

PATRICK TOMLIN
PATRICK TOMLIN*
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
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Abstract

Perhaps the best-known theory of fairness is John Broome's: that fairness is the proportional satisfaction of claims. In this article, I question whether claims are the appropriate focus for a theory of fairness, at least as Broome understands them in his current theory. If fairness is the proportionate satisfaction of claims, I argue, then the following would be true: fairness could not help determine the correct distribution of claims; fairness could not be used to evaluate the distribution of claims; fairness could not guide us in distributing claims (or unowed goods); we could not have a claim to be treated fairly; and we would not be wronged when treated unfairly. These entailments mean that it is questionable that fairness is concerned with claims in the way Broome suggests. At the very least, the relationship between fairness and claims appears to be more complex than the picture painted by Broome.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 200 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 Broome, John, ‘Fairness’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 91 (1990–1), pp. 87–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Broome, John, ‘Kamm on Fairness’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (1998), pp. 955–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Saunders, Ben, ‘Fairness between Competing Claims’, Res Publica 16 (2010), pp. 41–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hooker, Brad, ‘Fairness’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 8 (2005), pp. 329–52, at 339–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Hooker, ‘Fairness’, pp. 338–9.

4 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 95. This phrase is italicized in the original.

5 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 90; Broome, ‘Kamm on Fairness’, p. 956.

6 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 96: ‘In some circumstances, no doubt, it will be very important to be fair, and in others fairness may be outweighed by expediency.’

7 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 94: ‘the particular business of fairness is to mediate between the conflicting claims of different people’; p. 95: ‘fairness is concerned only with how well each person's claim is satisfied compared with how well other people's are satisfied. It is concerned only with relative satisfaction, not absolute satisfaction.’ Emphasis in original.

8 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 93; Hooker, ‘Fairness’, p. 334.

9 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 96.

10 Broome, ‘Fairness’, pp. 94, 96.

11 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 94. Emphasis in original.

12 Broome, ‘Kamm on Fairness’, p. 959.

13 This is not to say that we must come to know these things in this order – we may sometimes work out what claims we think people have on the basis of what we believe to be fair. I am grateful to John Broome for useful discussion here.

14 I am grateful to Ben Saunders and John Broome for discussion here.

15 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 96.

16 Hooker, ‘Fairness’, p. 334.

17 Broome does, in Weighing Goods, wonder whether everyone has equal claim to good. However, this is of no assistance here. First, because Broome is highly sceptical of this claim about claims and does not endorse it. Second, and more importantly, because this is a claim about the distribution of claims (that they are distributed equally), not a claim about the grounds of claims (that claims are grounded in equality), which is what is required here. Third, because a universal equal claim to good could not explain the difference in moral situation between the younger daughter and the next-door neighbour's daughter, who is also not taken on a zoo trip by our divorced father. To explain that difference, we must establish that the younger daughter has a claim which the neighbour's daughter does not have. This can either take the form of a claim against the father (grounded in the value of equality) to have certain things which certain others get, which the sisters have but the neighbour does not (meaning that the father does not treat the neighbour unfairly), or a claim to fair treatment (which, again, the sisters have but the neighbour's daughter does not), in which case the father treats the younger sister and the neighbour's daughter unfairly, but only wrongs his daughter in doing so. A universal equal claim to good establishes neither of these. See Broome, John, Weighing Goods (Oxford, 1991), p. 197Google Scholar.

18 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 95. Emphasis in original.

19 Broome, ‘Fairness’, p. 94.

20 Broome, Weighing Goods, pp. 192–200.

21 Broome, ‘Fairness’, pp. 90–3.

22 Broome, Weighing Goods, pp. 180–2, 192, 198–9.

23 Hooker, ‘Fairness’, p. 336.

24 For scepticism of this claim, see Hooker, ‘Fairness’, pp. 335–7; David McCarthy, ‘Is the Badness of Inequality the Goodness of Lotteries?’, unpublished MS, <http://mora.rente.nhh.no/projects/EqualityExchange/ressurser/articles/mccarthy1a.pdf>, pp. 24–7; David McCarthy, ‘Distributive Fairness’, unpublished MS. For a detailed discussion of a related claim made by Broome (that injustice harms), see Temkin, Larry, ‘Equality, Priority and the Levelling Down Objection’, The Ideal of Equality, ed. Clayton, Matthew and Williams, Andrew (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 126–61, at 147–51Google Scholar.

25 ‘Unfairness . . . is plainly an individual harm. There is unfairness if someone's claim is satisfied less than in proportion to its strength. Since a claim is a duty owed particularly to the person, the unfairness is plainly suffered by that person’ (Broome, Weighing Goods, p. 198).

26 This is, of course, also questionable. I am grateful to Brad Hooker for comments here.

27 I have benefited greatly from comments from John Broome, Brad Hooker and Ben Saunders. I am grateful to my nieces, Hannah and Isabella Patrick, for regular reminders of the value and importance of fairness.