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This chapter challenges an account of citizenship that treats us as political philosophers or perennial deliberators and instead proposes the model of the philosopher-citizen who exhibits a computationally intense life of the mind. It first describes the ideal of the philosopher-citizen before considering how a theory of justice is to be employed by well-intentioned citizens by taking into account the views of John Rawls. It argues that the model of the philosopher-citizens tends to be monistic, collapsing the diversity of moral achievements that citizens can make in a democracy, and that this ideal should be separated from an account of the citizen's decision-making obligations. The chapter also examines the principles for citizens and for representatives in the context of Justice as Fairness and concludes by outlining the essential assumptions of a nonideal democratic theory.

Discusses marriage contracts and separation agreements. Explores the differences of approach between Scots law and English law, and discusses two cases on section 16 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985, which allows a party to escape from such an agreement if it is not fair and reasonable.

In this chapter we consider how the merits of a case should be dealt with by the tribunal. This stage begins once all preliminary matters have been dealt with. It is not possible to lay down an absolutely fixed procedure, since much will depend on the facts of the case and its procedural history. However, we consider, in the usual order, some of the main parts of a standard hearing on the merits, so as to give a general impression of how a typical tribunal case should be conducted. As has already been mentioned, tribunal members are under an obligation to avoid formality wherever possible.1 While this obligation exists for all parts of the hearing, including discussions on preliminary matters, it is perhaps more relevant where the merits of the case are under consideration, since at this stage evidence on the merits of the application or appeal will be led.2 One of the major ways in which such informality is demonstrated (when compared with public court hearings) lies in the emphasis during tribunal hearings on interventions and questioning by tribunal members.3 However, the obligation to conduct the hearing as informally as possible should not be seen as a blank cheque simply to deal with the arguments and evidence presented in a completely arbitrary and relaxed way.

Fairness concerns itself with proportionality, not equality. It is a question of reciprocity – “just desserts”, what one deserves – rather than egalitarian distribution. This chapter focuses on how Shakespeare tends to depict feelings of unfairness as a key motivation for revenge and, if unchecked, a possible route to villainy, evil, and even societal collapse. This is because the desire for revenge fuels selfish or self-seeking behaviour – the antithesis of fairness – and thus unfairness begets unfairness. Human groups which lack any sense of fairness and in which individuals have become wholly selfish cannot flourish. I will focus chiefly on Richard III’s primary for motivation revenge, Hamlet’s refusal to kill Claudius when he is praying, the Duke’s pardon of Angelo in Measure for Measure, and Edmund’s motivations in King Lear.

Telle Hailikari and her colleagues from the University of Helsinki report a series of interviews with students and their teachers that focus on how staff design and carry out assessment, showing limitations in the teachers’ knowledge of technical aspects of assessment practices, and a consequent failure to use clearly defined assessment criteria in their marking. This leads to uncertainty among the staff about their reasons for awarding particular grades and a feeling among students that the system is unfair, even though the students believe that only teachers can have the expertise to make those assessments. The concept of ‘fairness in assessment’ is explored in relation to the need to establish reliability and validity in the procedure, leading to a discussion of the implications for effective practice.

This chapter, which examines the history of the conflict between news and science television broadcasting in the United States, discusses the role of television news in reframing science's public image and cites a survey result which reveals an increase in mass media coverage of science, technology, and personal health stories. It explains that communication about risks identified by or related to scientific research posed special challenges for television, particularly with the passage of the Fairness Doctrine. The chapter also considers the link between declining enrollments in science courses and the state of science on television.

The Federal Communication Commission required broadcast stations, both radio and TV, to renew their licenses every three years. Before Helms arrived at WRAL, license renewals were routine, but his editorials and changes at the FCC meant scrutiny of the station’s political activity. The FCC’s Fairness Doctrine required stations to seek out opposing opinions when they editorialized on controversial issues, and the Equal Time rule obliged stations to offer response time to individuals they criticized. Helms’s political intentions at WRAL meant he pushed what the station could get away with to the limit. His use of WRAL to advance the conservative movement meant challenges to license renewals in 1963 and 1966. North Carolina’s moderate Democrats recognized Helms’s intentions. The FCC investigated the station and issued warnings. WRAL adopted new policies, but little changed. Helms chose whose dissent to air and shaped what they could say. In many cases he managed to use the opposition to conservatism’s advantage.

Policy scholars acknowledge that norms affect policy choice, but have not fully articulated a theory of how norms can serve as a catalyst for sudden policy change. After reviewing existing efforts to theorize non-incremental policy change, the chapter offers an initial account of a theory of norm-driven policy change that could better predict policy change as well as stability in the future. The crux of the theory is based on the new idea of normative reframing, or using a new issue frame to portray an issue in terms of an alternative norm that supports a new policy alternative. This idea of new normative frames draws on and expands ideas from Baumgartner and Jones’ Punctuated Equilibrium Theory in trying to improve our ability to explain and predict sudden policy change. The chapter concludes with a conceptual overview of how the process of normative reframing helps explain the sudden change toward auctions in emissions trading policies related to climate change, and allows for better predictions of other specific policy changes in general.

In dealing with disability, resource egalitarians such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Bruce Ackerman actually switch between resource egalitarianism, welfare egalitarianism, and utilitarianism. They initially try to maintain the ideal of resource equality, then modify their theories to justify the allocation of additional resources to the disabled, but veer toward welfare egalitarianism because of such modifications. They then look to limit redistribution to the disabled, which sometimes leads to a form of utilitarianism. This chapter examines Rawls's treatment of disability and considers the oscillation in his theory between inadequate provision for the disabled and excessive redistribution to the disabled. It also discusses some new positions and new arguments advanced by Rawls in his book Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, including his two principles of justice: the principle of liberty and the difference principle.

In this chapter the essential issue of fairness is discussed as it is (and should be) a cardinal feature of existing and any future rationing method. The central characteristics of fairness, as it is functionally defined here, are described as are examples of failures in allocation fairness in both organ transplantation and in the Oregon Health Plan. It notes that while the consequences of not receiving an organ or a scarce drug may be death or serious injury, the allocation methods are generally accepted (even though there are desperate patients involved), because they are fundamentally judged as fair. There is a detailed description of the author’s adaptation and expansion of Norman Daniels’s and James Sabin’s “accountability for reasonableness” approach to deciding how to allocate scarce resources. The discussion is illustrated with actual case examples.

In any system that limits the availability of certain goods, some will gain access to them and others will not. It is possible to conceive of the latter as losers in some way. This chapter discusses various ways to think about people who will not get the healthcare interventions they think they should have, because of rationing. If the system is functionally and procedurally fair (as formulated in Chapter 3), then people who have been denied an intervention cannot be thought of having lost something unfairly. This chapter describes “real” losers as those individuals who have lost access to healthcare unfairly, as by a misapplication of the rules or by open or covert bias. The question that remains is whether these losers are owed any redress or recompense for their loss. The conclusion is that it would be cumbersome to do so, except to use these cases to make the rules fairer.

This chapter discusses the politically and morally contentious issue of whether strict fairness and justice in a rationing system can be accomplished in a democracy like the United States. Fairness dictates that similar cases should be similarly treated, and morally irrelevant facts about people should be exactly that: irrelevant. However, it seems difficult to imagine (for example) that undocumented immigrants would be offered the same benefits under a comprehensive and rationed healthcare system as citizens, due to public opposition. On the other hand, the “better angels of our nature” have occasionally prevailed against apparent dominant opinion, such as in the case of civil rights. However, it is acknowledged that the tyranny of the majority may have to be mollified if that would ensure acceptance of comprehensive healthcare reform.

This chapter focuses on Carl McIntire who is an outspoken Nixon hater that saw the president’s rapprochement with China as nothing more than high treason. McIntire used his radio station, WXUR, his weekly newspaper, the Christian Beacon, and his nationally broadcast program, the Twentieth Century Reformation Hour, to attack his wide-assortment of enemies: the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, the AFL-CIO, the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, the Pope, Billy Graham, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). McIntire hated the FCC the most as the government commission succeeded in dismantling his radio station in 1973, using the Fairness Doctrine as a basis. Historians and religious scholars have generally viewed McIntire as a distasteful icon of the old-fashioned fundamentalism, and media scholars ignored him entirely.

This chapter narrates Carl McIntire’s struggle, and eventual defeat, against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In 1973, McIntire faced another great defeat after being removed by the American Council of Christian Churches: his long legal battle against the FCC had drawn to a close, and it ruled that his station, WXUR, has lost its license to operate. The Supreme Court had even declined to review the case, and upheld the FCC’s decision. This catastrophic defeat had a massive impact on his devoted followers all over the country. What brought the station down was its defiance of the Fairness Doctrine, since the station programs did not provide an equal opportunity to create rebuttals for the issues that the conservatives faced. For the conservatives, this doctrine served as a symbol of persecution by liberals.

In the House of Lords decision of Miller v Miller, McFarlane v McFarlane [2006] UKHL 24 the English rules on financial provision on divorce were clarified and made, in the judges’ eyes at least, fairer. The Scottish judge in the case, Lord Hope, expressed the view that to achieve a similar fairness in Scotland the Scottish legislation would require amendment. This commentary disagrees with that suggestion.

Rawls’s Theory of Justice has had two parallel lives in political theory. The first—the version Rawls wrote—is a response to utilitarianism’s failure to take seriously the separateness of persons. The second—the unwritten version “received” by its general audience—is a response to libertarianism’s failure to take seriously our moral obligations to the well-being of our fellow citizens. This chapter explores how, had he written the second version, Rawls might have dealt with libertarians’ critique of “justice as fairness” as fundamentally illiberal, and how his two principles might have been transformed in the process.