Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy,

Volume 4 David Sobel

Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/oxford-studies-in-political-philosophy-volume-4-david-
sobel/
 Oxford Studies In Political Philosophy
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Oxford Studies in
Political
Philosophy
Volume 4

Edited by
D av i d S o b e l, Pe t e r Va l l e n t y n e,
a n d S t ev e n Wa l l
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© the several contributors 2018
Te moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN  978–0–19–881397–2 (Hbk.)
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

ISBN  978–0–19–881398–9 (Pbk.)

Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Preface

Te chapters collected here were presented at the fourth annual Workshop

for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy in Barcelona, Spain. Local logistics
were superbly organized by Serena Olsaretti, Paula Casal, and Andrew
Williams at ICREA–Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. We thank
them, and the graduate students who helped them, for laying the foundation
for a successful workshop. We would like to thank all the participants at the
conference for making this a stimulating and fun event. Members of our
editorial board refereed the chapters in this volume. As always, our great
thanks go to them for quietly doing vital work needed to make OSPP
successful. And of course thanks also to the authors of the papers collected
here for bringing fascinating ideas to the table for us all to consider.
Congratulations to Alex Zakaras, whose paper won the Sanders Prize in
Political Philosophy and to Tomas Sinclair, whose paper was runner-up for
the Prize. Travel by editor Steven Wall to the workshop at which the papers
were presented was made possible through the support of a grant from the
John Templeton Foundation. Te opinions expressed in this publication are
those of the authors and do not necessarily refect the views of the John
Templeton Foundation.
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Contents

List of Contributors ix

Part I: Legitimacy
1. Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy 3
Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift
2. Te Power of Public Positions: Ofcial Roles
in Kantian Legitimacy 28
Tomas Sinclair
3. Institutional Legitimacy 53
Allen Buchanan

Part II: Egalitarianism

4. ‘(Luck and Relational) Egalitarians of the World, Unite!’ 81
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
5. Varieties of Relational Egalitarianism 110
Zoltan Miklosi

Part III: Liberty and Coercion

Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

6. Moralizing Liberty 141

Ralf M. Bader
7. May a Government Mandate More Comprehensive
Health Insurance than Citizens Want for Temselves? 167
Alex Voorhoeve
8. Complicity and Coercion: Toward an Ethics of
Political Participation 192
Alex Zakaras

Index 219

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 List of Contributors

Ralf M. Bader, University of Oxford

Allen Buchanan, Duke University
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Aarhus University
Zoltan Miklosi, Central European University
Tomas Sinclair, University of Oxford
Zofa Stemplowska, University of Oxford
Adam Swift, University of Warwick
Alex Voorhoeve, London School of Economics
Alex Zakaras, University of Vermont
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 PA RT I
LEGITIMACY
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 1
Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy
Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

1. INTRODUCTION

Democracies adopt many questionable policies. Some allow parents to opt

out from vaccination for their children without medical consultation, even
though mass vaccination is needed for herd immunity. Some devote more
tax revenue to protecting afuent neighbourhoods from crime than they
allocate to poor ones. Some make no serious legislative eforts to tackle pay
gaps between citizens who difer only in gender or ethnicity. Some make no
efort to tackle anti-immigrant hatred or demonization of single mothers in
the press. We consider these to be cases of social injustice.
Of course, no real state has democratic procedures that are entirely free
of corruption and other democracy-undermining distortions. But suppose
such a state existed, and suppose it decided to adopt any of these policies.
Would the coercive enforcement of such policies be permissible? Or could
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

those at the receiving end claim they were wronged? Suppose, further, that
you had the power not only to resist the coercion but coercively to impose
an alternative policy on others. Perhaps you have some control over police
budgets and can secretly divert resources from some neighbourhoods to others.
Perhaps you are the clerk to a legislature and can amend legislation without
anybody noticing (Overland and Barry, 2011). Could it be permissible for
you to do so?
Te conventional view in the philosophical literature holds both that it
would be impermissible for you to do so and that it would be permissible
for the state to coerce you. In what follows we focus mainly on the latter:
the permissibility of state coercion. Te conventional view is that democratic
decisions are permissibly enforceable unless they are gravely unjust—perhaps
when they blatantly violate basic human rights—but we assume that none
of the cases we have outlined meets that standard. In cases of less serious
social injustice, it is generally thought that their democratic provenance

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 4 Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

sufces to render the decisions permissibly enforceable.1 One may, of

course, seek to change the decision by democratic methods. But the fact
that a democratically approved policy is unjust does not undermine the
permissibility of the state coercion.
We question this conventional view. We agree that whether it is permissible
to enforce a decision depends on both its provenance—the procedure by
which it was made—and its content—the extent to which the decision
delivers social justice. But we hold that social injustice does not need to be
grave in order to render impermissible the enforcement of the decision with
the democratic provenance. Rather, whether it is the democratic provenance
or the just content of the decision that determines the permissibility of
its enforcement depends on whether, on a case by case basis, we have a
greater reason in any given case to advance (i.e., to respect or promote)
justice or legitimacy.
Let us fx some terminology. When we say that a decision is or is not just
we mean to evaluate its content. Decisions are just in this sense when people
get what they are due (which, depending on the understanding of justice one
favours, might mean various things: that they get what they are historically
entitled to, what they need, what they deserve, what they would be entitled
to in a society regulated by principles that would have been agreed to under
certain idealized conditions, etc.).
In addition to their content, decisions also have some provenance.
We assume that democratic procedures should be set up in polities to
reach at least some coercive decisions. We refer to coercive decisions that,
in appropriate contexts, have such democratic provenance as legitimate.
Te outcomes of legitimate procedures are therefore legitimate only in
the sense that they are the outcomes of the right procedures for making
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

those decisions, which in the case we present here amounts to their being
democratic.
Our use of “legitimate” difers from that in some of the philosophical
literature. Sometimes the question of whether a decision is legitimate is
simply that of whether it is permissible to enforce the decision. (Sometimes
the question of legitimacy is substituted for, or taken together with, the

1
Something is permissibly enforceable, let us say, when enforcing it (in line with
any further requirements of proportionality and status of the enforcer) does not wrong
anyone. A decision may be permissibly enforceable without there being any reason to
enforce it: the fact that the decision was made in a given way may make it permissibly
enforceable without there being a good reason to enforce it all the same. Tat said, in
what follows we assume that there is a reason to enforce the permissibly enforceable
decisions in question. We are grateful to David Estlund and Andrew Williams for
discussion.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy 5

further question of whether the decision has authority; i.e., whether those
subject to coercion have a duty to comply with the coercion, or even the
duty to obey.) Te issue of permissible enforceability is generally thought
to depend on both the content and the provenance of the decision; the
conventional view holds that democratic decisions are not permissibly
enforceable in cases where their content is gravely unjust.
We, by contrast, restrict the term “legitimate” to the issue of provenance,
to the procedural aspect. Whether a coercive decision is legitimate, for us,
depends entirely on how it was made; it is a further question whether it is
in fact permissibly enforceable. One can thus accept that a procedure—and
the decision it has produced—are perfectly legitimate, while insisting that
the injustice of its content would make it impermissible to enforce that
decision. Te dethroning of democratic legitimacy we aim to achieve in this
chapter is a weakening of the contribution that legitimacy in our sense makes
to legitimacy in the other sense.
We have said that the justice of a decision is a matter of its content
rather than its provenance. But of course ways of making decisions can
themselves be evaluated as just or unjust, and so we could have framed our
argument in terms of the familiar contrast between “procedural” and
“substantive” justice. If citizens have a right to an equal say in the procedures
by which their laws are made, then justice itself—procedural justice—requires
that the laws be made that way. Indeed, we might have followed Pettit
(2015) in framing the “content/provenance” distinction as being between
“social justice” and “political justice”: the latter, for him, coincides “with
what is often described as the legitimacy as distinct from the justice—I would
say, the social justice—of the structure” (11). For Pettit, then, what we are
calling “legitimacy” is labelled, in the political context, “political justice”.
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

We have no objection to analyses of legitimacy that invoke procedural

(or political) justice. It may well be the justice of a procedure that confers
legitimacy on its decisions. Tis still leaves conceptual space between the
justice of a decision-making procedure and the justice of the content of
its outcomes. And it raises the question of how the two kinds of justice
relate to each another when it comes to assessing the normative status of
particular decisions.
Our dethroning of democratic legitimacy will unfold as follows. We shall
frst—in §2—set out in greater detail the conventional view that we dispute.
In §3, we outline our alternative, which we call the balancing view. Section
4 sets out our positive case for that view and our negative case against the
conventional view. Section 5 considers further objections to the balancing
view. We conclude with §6, which broadens the picture to explore the
implications of our analysis for non-ideal circumstances.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 6 Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

2. THE CONVENTIONAL VIEW

According to the conventional view, a law or policy is permissibly enforceable

if it was decided by a proper democratic procedure, even if the law or policy is
somewhat unjust.2 When it is gravely unjust, however, it is not permissibly
enforceable, even if it was decided by that same procedure. Te view, then, has
two elements. First, it holds that democratic provenance can bestow permissible
enforceability on a decision. Tis claim is widely accepted and has gained
recent support from David Estlund (2008), Niko Kolodny (2014a and b) and
Daniel Viehof (2014). Second, the conventional view holds that democratic
provenance of the right type fails to ground permissible enforceability only if
the content of the decision is gravely unjust.3
Here is Rawls (1993: 428), setting out what we take to be the
conventional view:
A legitimate procedure gives rise to legitimate laws and policies made in accordance
with it; and legitimate procedures may be customary, long established, and
accepted as such. Neither the procedures nor the laws need be just by a strict
standard of justice, even if, what is also true, they cannot be too gravely unjust.4
At some point, the injustice of the outcomes of a legitimate democratic procedure
corrupts its legitimacy, and so will the injustice of the political constitution itself.
But before this point is reached, the outcomes of a legitimate procedure are
legitimate whatever they are. Tis gives us purely procedural democratic legitimacy
and distinguishes it from justice, even granting that justice is not specifed
procedurally. Legitimacy allows an undetermined range of injustice that justice
might not permit.
Tis passage is somewhat obscure. When he says “At some point, the
injustice of the outcomes of a legitimate democratic procedure corrupts its
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

2
Te conventional view is also often claimed to establish authority, or is ambiguous
between the two claims; we put this aside.
3
We put aside some complications, such as that in circumstances of emergency
permissible enforceability could be grounded in other ways. In addition to Rawls, this
view is endorsed by Tomas Christiano (2004, 2008), Philip Pettit (2015), Jonathan
Quong (2010), Tomas Sinclair (chapter 2 of this book [and private correspondence]),
Laura Valentini (2012), and, as we suggest in §4.5, possibly Daniel Viehof (2014). More
generally, we think that most Rawlsians are supporters of the view and possibly also most
Kantians, though the latter may deny that justice and democracy can come apart. Estlund
(2008: 111) is carefully non-committal on the limits of democracy’s ability to permit
enforcement.
4
Notice that Rawls talks about the case when procedures or laws are “too gravely
unjust” (our italics). For him, apparently, there can be grave injustices that are not “too
grave” and which do not thereby corrupt the legitimacy of the procedure. We will ignore
this complication, henceforward taking him to hold that “grave” injustice is grave enough
to “corrupt” legitimacy. An alternative reading of the phrase is also possible, according to
which Rawls holds an implicit balancing view.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy 7

legitimacy,” he seems to suggest that the gravity of injustice in an outcome

deprives not only that outcome but also the procedure itself of legitimacy.
Perhaps, though, Rawls means that the legitimacy that is “corrupted” is only
that of the gravely unjust outcome: i.e., in our terminology, the outcome
is not permissibly enforceable. (Tis would be the natural reading if he
had written “At some point, the injustice of the outcome of a legitimate
democratic procedure corrupts its legitimacy” (our emphasis).) On this
interpretation, a legitimate procedure may yield an outcome the legitimacy
of which is corrupted by its gravely unjust content. In that case the decision
lacks legitimacy in the sense that it is not permissibly enforceable, even
though it issued from a legitimate procedure. We interpret Rawls’s position
here as one according to which avoidance of grave injustice5 is necessary and
sufcient for permissible enforceability. However, if a decision is not gravely
unjust, then the legitimate provenance of the decision is sufcient for
permissible enforceability.6
Before presenting and defending our alternative view, let us acknowledge—
in order to put aside—that there will be many points of overlap between
decisions that are democratically legitimate and those that are socially just.
We are happy to accept that what is democratically legitimate might be a
complex matter: a procedure might qualify because of its purely procedural
properties or because, say, of its tendency to produce given—perhaps just—
outcomes (Estlund 2008). We do not set out the conditions for democratic
legitimacy but we accept that it can make distributive demands and that for
a procedure to count as democratic it may have explicitly to rule out, or in
other ways make impossible, certain outcomes.7 We are also happy to accept
that what social justice requires may itself include procedural elements.
Political rights may be requirements of social justice and, further, perhaps
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

certain ways in which citizens meet one another’s justice claims qualify as
“social justice” only if they are put, and kept, in place by democratic
procedures (Pettit 2015). All this can be granted while retaining the crucial
point that the demands of social justice, fully and properly understood, may
difer from, and confict with, the demands that result even from perfectly
legitimate democratic procedures.

5
Assuming the absence of less gravely unjust alternatives.
6
Whether or not it is necessary is left unclear, given Rawls’s views on global justice,
which we put aside. We dispute both the sufciency and the necessity claims.
7
Tis can be done by stipulating the conditions for a genuinely democratic process
(e.g. that all participants see their co-citizens as their moral equals). Such a move might
also ensure that we could always locate some value in the democratic process. We are
sympathetic to such a stipulation but insist that, while it may rule out some substantively
unjust outcomes from being decided by the demos, it cannot plausibly rule out all of
them.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 8 Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

3. THE BALANCING VIEW

Our alternative proposal is that democratic legitimacy and social justice both
ground pro tanto claims to a decision’s permissible enforceability; these
claims have to be weighed or otherwise taken into account on a case-by-case
basis. We say “weighed or otherwise taken into account,” since we are not
committed to a simple view of weighing (though we refer to “weighing”
throughout, for simplicity). Perhaps in some contexts one consideration
can pre-empt or otherwise eliminate the need to consider the other: what
matters is whether, taking into account what can be achieved, there is greater
reason to advance legitimacy or justice in any given case.8 Te two ideals at
stake invoke diferent normative considerations; they embody and advance
(that is, respect or promote) diferent values. Even with grave injustice of the
table, we see no reason to regard the considerations invoked by the former as
invariably weightier or more forceful than those invoked by the latter.
In terms of our proposed analysis, the conventional view can be regarded
as a claim about a particular case: it holds that only injustices of a particular
level of severity—those deemed “grave”—are unjust enough to outweigh or
otherwise block the pro tanto permissible enforceability conferred on them
in virtue of their having been produced by procedures that realize or
promote legitimacy values to a certain degree. Tat degree need not be
100%—recall Rawls: “A legitimate procedure gives rise to legitimate laws
and policies made in accordance with it; and legitimate procedures may be
customary, long established, and accepted as such. Neither the procedures
nor the laws need be just by a strict standard of justice, even if, what is also
true, they cannot be too gravely unjust” (our emphasis). For us, casting the
conventional view in this light—bringing out the scalarity in both components
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

of the judgement about proper enforceability—reveals an arbitrariness in

judging only “grave” injustices to lack permissible enforceability. In our
view, less-than-grave injustice may also lack that property even if it enjoys
democratic provenance. Tus not only can there be no general presumption
that only grave injustice prevents democratic provenance from conferring
permissible enforceability on a decision, it is also the case that the need to
avoid even less-than-grave injustice sometimes grounds the permissible
enforceability of outcomes rejected by the democratic process. We think

8
It might be doubted that democratic procedures always give even a pro tanto reason
for its being permissible to enforce a decision. Unlike our balancing view, the conventional
view can deny that the fact that a gravely unjust outcome was the outcome of an otherwise
ideal procedure does anything to support the view that that outcome is permissibly
enforceable. We fnd this position implausible: if the value of the procedure does not
depend solely on the outcome it delivers, it is unclear why the mere fact that an outcome
is unjust, even if gravely so, deprives the procedure of all value.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy 9

that this relationship holds whether we are interested in what is right and
wrong relative to the facts or relative to the evidence available.9
More schematically, the balancing view holds that the avoidance of (more)
grave injustice is necessary and sufcient for permissible enforceability: it is
permissible to enforce the outcome that avoids (more) grave injustice than
the alternative, and it is impermissible to enforce any alternative. So the
avoidance of (more) grave illegitimacy is neither necessary nor sufcient for
permissible enforceability. But we also deny that full justice is necessary
for permissible enforceability: sometimes the imperfectly just legitimate
decision will be permissibly enforceable.

4. DEFENDING THE BALANCING VIEW

Our negative case for our balancing view is to point out the problems with the
conventional view, which is either vague or implausible. It is vague if it amounts
to the view that anything that outweighs legitimacy should count as grave
injustice. If so, then the conventional view may even collapse into the balancing
view on the quiet. If, on the other hand, the view invokes some independent
account of what counts as grave injustice then it is implausible. Tere is no
good reason to think that democratic legitimacy should generally outweigh
social justice when the two values confict, even with grave injustice of the
table. Te conventional view gains credibility when the value of legitimacy—
democratic procedures—is not properly analysed. Once it is (and our
analysis is mostly ofered in §§4.3–4.5) we see that the credence-giving
value of democratic procedures is not unique to them, while the remaining
value or values—variously articulated as non-subordination or treating
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

people as equals, or with equal respect—cannot ground the conventional view.

But let us begin with our more positive case. We have already pointed out
that there are values on both sides of the question—democratic legitimacy
and social justice. While we frequently hear why democracy might be
valuable, the value of justice is often taken for granted, making it less clear
what is at stake in decisions’ being just or unjust. In what follows we attempt
to say a bit more about the latter.

4.1 Justice Judgements can Go beyond Mere Recommendations

What is at stake in judgements of social justice? One way to make sense of
the conventional view is to see judgements of social justice (except those

9
On “fact-relativity,” and distinctions between it and “belief-relativity” and “evidence-
relativity,” see Parft (2011: 150–62).

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 10 Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

of grave injustice) as necessarily conditional: “Tis is what social justice

demands but I do not regard that fact as making a claim about its permissible
enforceability unless further conditions are met. Te correctness of my
judgement about social justice is not in question. But it matters also what
others think.” Judgements about justice are rather, as Pettit (2015: 16) nicely
puts it, “recommendations”; their claim to permissible enforceability is
provisional on further conditions—conditions of legitimate decision-making
(or political justice)—being in place (16). Similarly Valentini (2012: 600–1),
who agrees that in ideal circumstances the permissible enforceability of
judgements of justice is “conditional on democratic approval,” sees them as
having “fragile normative status.”
All this is compatible with regarding judgements of social justice as
correct or not; true or false. A legitimate decision may thus be mistaken
about what arrangements people are owed as a matter of justice, and acting
on that mistaken decision means failing to enforce the arrangements that
citizens would, in fact, be right to demand as a matter of justice. But the fact
that a judgement is correct about what it would be right to demand does
not change the fact that the permissible enforceability of the demand is
conditional on its being democratically decided.10
Tis is a coherent view but it comes at a cost. To see the cost consider
the following three cases, in which citizens vote on (a) whether to paint the
public lamp posts purple or magenta, (b) whether to enact legislation to
protect an area of outstanding natural beauty, and (c) whether to devote
some resources to tackling a less than gravely unjust gender pay gap.
When, as part of what I accept to be a legitimate decision procedure, I vote
for magenta because it’s a colour that I like, there is no difculty in my
accepting that what is permissibly enforceable should depend on, for example,
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

what is the majority view. In this case, let us suppose, the outcome derives
its permissible enforceability entirely from its being the outcome of the
procedure, because there is no procedure-independent reason to enforce one
colour over the other. If so, my vote cannot even represent an independent
judgement of what colour it would be permissible to enforce.
When I vote on whether to protect an area of outstanding natural beauty
I may believe that there is a procedure-independent reason to enact such
coercive legislation—this area of natural beauty ought to be protected no
matter what everyone thinks. But I may also think that the decision is not

10
Tat said, the view that judgements of justice are mere recommendations could not
hold that a vote for X means “X ought to be enforced if and only if it is democratically
decided.” Tat view is satisfed even if nothing is democratically decided, since then the
conditional has not been violated. A vote surely means more than “don’t enforce this
unless it is democratically passed.” We are grateful to David Estlund for this point as well
as for making us clarify our argument in this section.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy 11

one of justice and in such cases only the procedure can confer permissible
enforceability on the decision.
But we can also imagine cases where in voting for a given outcome,
I am making an independent judgement about what just outcome it
would be permissible to enforce. Put diferently, we can imagine cases
where I am making a judgement about what justice demands about what
should be decided and enforced. In such cases if I lose, and the fact that
I lose does not lead me to change my mind, I believe that we have made
a mistake somewhere along the line when we enforce the outcome I voted
against.
At this point we can consider two possibilities. First, we might hold that
the mistake occurred at the point of decision-making but, once the wrong
decision was made, it became permissible to enforce the wrong decision:
only the procedure—and not the correctness of the judgment—confers
permissible enforceability on the decision. Tis is compatible with seeing
judgements of justice as provisional recommendations.
Second, we might hold that the mistake occurred both at the point of
decision-making and at the point of enforcement of the (wrong) decision.
We could accept that a democratic body should decide X and enforce what
it decided, without being committed to believing that the body should
enforce what is decided if it did not decide X. We could further hold that X
is so important that it should be enforced even if X was not decided by the
democratic body. If so, when voting, we could be inputting our judgement
about X precisely as a judgement about what permissibly enforceable claims
people have, and the judgement about what those claims are can be made
on grounds independent of the collective procedure to which they are
inputting their judgement. On this view, the question others are getting
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

the wrong answer to when they do not vote for X is precisely what it
would be permissible to enforce on grounds independent of the procedure for
collectively deciding that question, rather than the question of what should
be provisionally recommended for enforcement.
Te “recommendation” view rules out the very possibility that individuals’
inputs to democratic procedures could be understood by them (and others)
as judgements about citizens’ claims against one another that are permissibly
enforceable on procedure-independent grounds. Our claim is not that we
must, on pain of conceptual incoherence, accept that some judgements
of social justice take this unconditional form. Rather, we hold that seeing
some claims of justice this way confers special importance on them, or rather,
in our view, captures the importance they already have. Tey are claims that
deny others the normative power to block their enforcement. Tese claims
are so important, in other words, that others lose the standing objection to
coercion they enjoy in other cases.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 12 Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

Proponents of the “recommendation” view could insist—and we will say

more to develop this argument in §4.3—that their view captures the fact
of disagreement about what these claims are, the need for a method for
resolving it, and the way in which that method can bestow normative force
on its outcomes. But our “balancing” view does not deny any of that: it
readily acknowledges that the values promoted or respected by disagreement-
resolving procedures can confer considerable weight on the outcomes they
produce. We simply add to the picture in emphasizing the fact that the object
of disagreement is citizens’ claims of justice against one another, and we
insist that getting that right must be weighed against whatever value attaches
to outcomes in virtue of their issuing from legitimate procedures.
Te proponents of the “recommendation” view could also claim that, when
voting, we should always ask only what would be permissibly enforceable
if it were decided by a legitimate procedure for making such a decision—
after all why have a vote at all? But there could be many reasons to see
the democratic procedures as a desirable way of making decisions about
enforcement. For example, we could care about the stability that having
democratic procedures is more likely to bring about.
But, fnally, note that the conventional view itself cannot hold that
judgements of justice are always merely recommendations if it is to allow
that it may be permissible to go against the democratic decision when grave
injustice is at stake. Tis brings into focus the puzzling nature of the
conventional view: it allows that considerations of grave injustice can block
the ability of legitimate procedures to confer permissible enforceability on
democratic decisions but denies this power to all other justice considerations.
But unless all grave injustice, and only grave injustice, undermines the
democratic nature of democratic procedures—which is implausible—it is
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

unclear how this trick can be pulled of. We will argue that it cannot.

4.2 Justice Judgements can be Inclusive

First, however, let us further defend the status of individuals’ judgements
about social justice by pointing out that they need not result from parochial,
sectarian, or blinkered reasoning. Democratic procedures can bolster their
credentials for conferring permissible enforceability on their decisions by
appealing to the fact that they combine the preferences or judgements of
diferent individuals into a collective decision. At its most general, perhaps,
the idea is that, to be legitimate, decisions must be, in the right way,
inclusive. Tey must satisfy conditions that in one way or another include
the preferences or judgements of those subject to the decision. Our response
is to point out that individuals’ judgements about justice can also be inclusive
in important ways. What is distinctive about democratic procedures is what

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy 13

they include: the actual votes of actual citizens. But including and responding
appropriately to the views and preferences of others may well be important
to the correct identifcation of what social justice requires as that identifcation
is attempted by each individual.
To avoid confusion, let us call such procedures undertaken by an individual,
in contrast to the democratic ones, processes.11 Such a process may be needed
because for one to have any confdence that one’s input to the legitimate
decision-making procedure correctly identifes social justice, one must have,
and be able to ofer to others, certain kinds of reasoning or considerations
as relevant. As an individual making one’s own judgement about what social
justice requires, it is likely to be helpful to engage with others, consider their
reasoning, see if their reasoning undermines one’s justifcations, and so on.
But one must also satisfy an internal justifcatory process, have subjected it
to critical refection, and so on (Goodin, 2000). Tinking about what people
would or would not agree to, or what could be justifed to them under certain
idealized conditions, or would emerge from a certain kind of procedure, were
it undertaken, may be part of that process. In some senses the individual’s own
process will be “collective” or “inclusive” in that it is likely to incorporate,
or at least in some ways respond to, the views of others. But this concerns
the individual forming her judgement about the correct input to the
legitimating procedure. It does not concern the sum of those individual
inputs being combined into a collective decision through an actual procedure
for combining them.12
Crucially, then, it is possible to distinguish between (i) processes to which
we as individuals (albeit perhaps through deliberation with others) must
subject candidate principles in order to assess them correctly as principles of
justice and (ii) procedures that individuals’ judgements about principles of
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

justice must go through in order for that combined or collective judgement

to be legitimate. Any contractualist approach to questions of justice will
involve a variant of the idea that one arrives at correct answers to questions
of justice by thinking about what would be agreed to by people, specifed a
certain way, in circumstances specifed a certain way. As Estlund (2008: 16)
says: “Contractualism . . . is a family of views that understand justice or
rightness as constituted by facts about what would be agreed to in a certain
imaginary collective choice situation.” Rawls’s original position is the
paradigm case here, of course. Tis is a claim about (i). It does not require

11
We thank David Estlund for pressing us to clarify this.
12
For a similar suggestion, presented as a criticism of Forst (2014), see Caney’s (2014:
156) insistence on the importance of distinguishing between “the justifcation required
for political legitimacy (political justifcation) and the justifcation required for a view to
be philosophically correct (philosophical justifcation)” (his emphases).

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 14 Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

conceiving justice as the outcome of any actual agreement between—or

any “combined” or “inclusive” or “collective” judgement based on the input
of—diferent people, but it allows justice to be inclusive in other important
ways.13 Tis is not to deny the possibility that actual inclusive procedures
can sometimes have epistemic advantages over the processes that individuals
alone can undertake. But non-democratic processes can make use of at least
some of the benefts (while also avoiding some of the pitfalls) of “inclusive”
decision-making.

4.3 Reasonable Disagreement does not Ground

the Conventional View
Perhaps, however, we underplay the importance of reasonable disagreement.
Te presence of such disagreement may mean that we owe respect to others’
views (and we discuss this in §4.4) but it may also suggest that our own
views—even those that went through the process described in §4.2—are
less worthy of respect. Te suggestion here is that the fact of disagreement—
and in particular reasonable disagreement—should reduce confdence in
one’s judgement to a level below that which, absent grave injustice, would
justify acting on it in the face of a democratically legitimate decision. Put
diferently, the proponents of the conventional view can appeal to the fact
of reasonable disagreement to ground the conclusion that, whatever may in
fact be the just decision, evidence will always warrant the conclusion that,
except in cases of grave injustice, the legitimate decision is the permissibly
enforceable one.
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

13
Amartya Sen (2009: 326) risks running the two modes—(i) and (ii)—together: “If
the demands of justice can only be assessed with the help of public reasoning, and if
public reasoning is constitutively related to the idea of democracy, then there is an
intimate connection between justice and democracy, with shared discursive features.” Te
thought here is that the way one goes about identifying justice, if one is doing it right,
involves a kind of reasoning (which Sen calls “public reasoning”) that will itself play a role
in any properly democratic way of making a collective decision. Even if that is true, we
are not sure that Sen always holds on to the distinction between the two distinct elements
in the picture. His emphasis on “social choice theory,” which is “deeply concerned with
the rational basis of social judgments and public decisions” (95, our emphases), seems to
involve a slide from the frst to the second. An individual’s judgement can be “social” in
being about social matters and it can be “public” in the sense of being about public matters
(or publicly available, or based on public reasoning). But talk of “public decisions,” and
indeed the very idea of “social choice,” takes us across the analytical divide into the (for
us) entirely distinct business of combining individuals’ judgements into a collective
decision. Te legitimacy of such a decision may well depend on its democratic provenance
(including perhaps considerations concerning the kinds of reasoning that citizens may
properly engage in when deciding on public matters), but it remains a distinct question
whether that decision is right about social justice.

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy 15

We do not need to deny that acknowledging reasonable disagreement

about a judgement could appropriately lessen one’s confdence in it.14 We
could concede that one’s commitment to one’s views should be reduced by
the recognition that reasonable people can and do disagree, or that other
views pass a “reasonableness” threshold. But this line of thought must have
limits. One problem is that it becomes hard simultaneously to assert that
such confdence is justifed in cases when the injustice at stake is grave.
Tat is, if one’s confdence should track the views of others then it is difcult
to see why we should make exceptions in the case of grave injustices. Unless
grave injustice stood for “obvious injustice,” there is no good reason why
one’s confdence would track gravity. If denying economic migrants
settlement visas is unjust it is unjust, or if denying free access to life-saving
drugs in order to use the resources for quicker epidural access on maternity
wards is unjust, it may well be gravely unjust, but we may not be certain
that it is unjust. By contrast, if stealing a pencil is unjust, it is not gravely
unjust, but we may be justifed in confdently believing it unjust—and
“obviously” so.
Moreover, the thought that democratic decisions outweigh just ones because
of lack of confdence in justice judgements can be met by analogous appeals
to lack of confdence in judgements about legitimacy. If disagreement about
justice should lead people to lack the confdence in their beliefs about what
justice requires, then why shouldn’t disagreement about legitimacy lead
them to lack confdence in their beliefs about what legitimacy requires? To
be sure, in some instances people will disagree merely on what social justice
requires rather than on what is the right procedure for deciding the matter
(though note that on many accounts of reasonable disagreement what
matters is not whether the disagreement exists but whether it could arise15).
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

But in other cases, we should expect people to be less confdent about what
would be legitimate than about what would be just. Te view that, society’s
resources permitting, children with weak immune systems have the right
that mass vaccinations be compulsory for the sake of herd immunity, or that
social justice requires that proper resources be spent on protecting poor
citizens from crime, or that a 5% pay gap between citizens who difer only
by gender or ethnicity is unjust, can be held with greater confdence than a
view about what would be the legitimate procedure for deciding those
questions. Tese doubts can take the form of disagreement over the specifc
democratic procedure that ought to be adopted or, more radically, whether
a given issue should be decided by democratic procedures at all.

14
For discussion of the problem see D. Christensen (2009). We are grateful to David
Estlund for the reference.
15
Jonathan Quong (2010).

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 16 Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

4.4 Equal Respect does not Ground the Conventional View

Epistemic and credence considerations are, of course, not the only ones that
may be invoked to motivate the need for inclusive democratic procedures.
Some think that democratic procedures are needed to respect people’s
general presumptive right or standing objection against coercion.16 Such a
right or objection is notoriously difcult to establish. It is not clear that
there is any wrong in coercing someone not to do evil. Nonetheless, in the
words of Kolodny (2014b: 316):
. . . [I]t is a common view, perhaps the dominant view, in political philosophy
that even the fact that the decision is substantively ideal is not enough to make it
legitimate [permissible to implement]. Tere is, according to this view, some
Further Objection to political subjection as such, even to substantively ideal
decisions . . . For all the insistence on a Further Condition, however, it is elusive
what Further Objection it is supposed to answer. When clearly stated, many of the
candidates for this Further Objection seem weightless or confused. If a residual
worry remains, as I argued elsewhere, it is that in being subjected to political
decisions, we are somehow subordinated to other people: namely, those who make
the decisions.
In what follows we do not pursue the objection from coercion but consider
two more promising attempts to capture similar worries: the appeal to
the need for equal respect and, in §4.5, the objection to subordination
acknowledged by Kolodny.
Advocates of the conventional view might argue that our view fails to
recognize that disagreement is not simply an unfortunate fact—something
for which, for practical purposes, we need an efective solution—or grounds
for reducing one’s confdence in one’s own judgement. Te disagreement
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

warrants a particular kind of response, one that treats each citizen as equally
a source of authority. Unlike the individual judgements that are their inputs,
the outcomes of democratic procedures may permissibly be enforced—even
where they are mistaken—because those procedures are the way of responding
to disagreement that accords citizens equal respect.
Of course, the conventional view holds that the outcomes of otherwise
legitimate procedures lack permissible enforceability when those outcomes
are gravely unjust. So that view does not always prefer the “equally respectful”
procedure to the just outcome; it allows content-reasons to outweigh
procedure-reasons when the former reach a particular level of seriousness.
In addition, many who ground the normative force of democratic decisions

16
See Fabienne Peter (2016) for discussion of how procedures could ground permissible
enforceability because they deliver “sufciently justifed beliefs about normative authority”
and/or “adjudicate between conficting wills.”

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy 17

in citizens’ disagreements with respect to matters of content confne their

concern to that subset of disagreement which is deemed “reasonable.”
What demands this particular moral response—this particular manifestation
of “equal respect”—is not the fact of disagreement as such, it is the fact
that some of the disagreement is reasonable. Tese two points might be
connected: one might think that any citizen who would vote for a gravely
unjust outcome is unreasonable, or vice versa, but neither version of the
connection is necessary.
Even with these two qualifcations in mind, we do not fnd this challenge
persuasive. In the frst place, it is a mistake to think of our view as altogether
neglecting the fact of (reasonable) disagreement. As we have explained,
the balancing view can acknowledge that individual judgements about
the content of social justice may themselves depend for their validity
on deliberative procedures that give proper weight to the judgements of
others. Te assessment of a principle as a correct principle of justice, as that
assessment is conducted by each individual, may well involve consideration
of whether it meets certain justifcatory criteria, whether it can ofer the
right kind of response to those who disagree, or who reasonably disagree,
and so on. So the diference between us and our opponent is not about
whether disagreement demands proper acknowledgement and normatively
appropriate response, it is about what constitutes that acknowledgement
and response.
Second, the appeal to the notion of “equal respect” fails to ground the
conventional view. While allowing that justice is also a way of articulating
that idea, Valentini (2012: 598) insists that it is the procedural ideal of
legitimacy that is its relevant articulation in contexts where there is
disagreement about justice: “what we typically call ‘justice’ articulates
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

the demands of equal respect under the so-called circumstances of justice,”

while “what we call ‘legitimacy’ articulates the demands of equal respect
under the circumstances of ‘political justice.’ ” Christiano’s justifcation of
democracy as a legitimating procedure involves a similar claim. According
to him (2004: 271, 273): “Each citizen has fundamental interests in being
able to see that he is being treated as an equal in a society where there is
signifcant disagreement about justice . . . Tere is a deep interest in having
one’s moral standing among one’s fellows clearly recognized and afrmed.”
Like Valentini, too, he frames this as a claim about justice:
democratic decision-making is a publicly just and fair way of making collective
decisions in the light of conficts of interests and disagreements about shared aspects
of social life. Citizens who skirt democratically made law act contrary to the right of
all citizens to have an equal say in making laws when there is substantial and
informed disagreement. Tose who refuse to pay taxes or who refuse to respect
property laws on the grounds that these are unjust are simply afrming a superior

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
 18 Zofa Stemplowska and Adam Swift

right to that of others in determining how the shared aspects of social life ought to
be arranged. Tus, they act unjustly. (ibid.: 286)
Let us grant that there is a kind of injustice when a decision about social
justice is enforced that difers from that which would have emerged from
a procedure that equally respected people’s judgement, or that publicly
treated them as equal members of society. Tere is also a kind of injustice
when a decision about social justice is enforced that fails to treat people
equally with respect to those properties or capacities that would have been
treated equally had the correct decision been enforced. Christiano (ibid.:
286) insists that “Te interests involved in being publicly treated as an equal
member of society are the preeminent interests a person has in social life . . .”
(his italics). We accept that those interests are weighty. But the idea of
“interests involved in being publicly treated as an equal member of society”
does not deliver the conclusion that procedural interests take priority over
all other interests (subject to the not-too-grave-injustice clause)—after all,
being publicly treated as an equal could involve both. Or, if the phrase is
mean to denote merely the procedural interests, the claim is unpersuasive.
People’s (non-procedural) interests are equally respected when people get
what they are owed as a matter of social justice, and these interests are
also important.
How should we compare these two diferent aspects of what might be
involved in respecting people equally, or treating them justly? Is it worse to
be denied (i) that procedure for deciding social arrangements which treats
those subject to it with equal respect, or (ii) those social arrangements that
would result from the correct identifcation of the implications of each
person’s claim to equal respect?
We might think about this by contrasting the diferent properties or
Copyright © 2018. Oxford University Press USA - OSO. All rights reserved.

capacities at stake. On the one hand are those properties that are equally
respected by the democratic procedure. Examples here would be the capacity
to make judgements about which distributions should be enforced, or having
that capacity recognized and afrmed by one’s fellow citizens. On the other
hand, are those properties equally respected when the correct, socially just,
decision is enforced? For example, the correct decision about allocation of
resources to health care or education can respect people’s capacities to lead
autonomous lives: democratic publics can decide to devote disproportionate
resources to end-of-life care, or to university education, to the relative
neglect of health care and education for young children. We see no reason
to suppose that the capacities respected by the democratic procedure are so
much more important than the capacities respected by the socially just
education or health care policy as to make only grave mistakes grounds for
denying the permissible enforceability of collective misjudgements. When
we refect on what we ourselves care about, we readily accept that it may

Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy Volume 4, edited by David Sobel, et al., Oxford University Press USA -
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived

from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a
notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright
holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the
United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must
comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted
with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of
this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a
part of this work or any other work associated with Project
Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you
provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work
in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in
the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
 copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe
and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating
the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may
be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to,
incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a
copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except

for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph
1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner
of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party
distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this
agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and
expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO
REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF
WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE
FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you

discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it,
you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by
sending a written explanation to the person you received the work
from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must
return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity
that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a
replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work
electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to
give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in
lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may
demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted
by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the
Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability,
costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur:
(a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project
Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.
It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and
donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a
secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help,
see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,

Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can
be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the
widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small
donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax
exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and
keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in
locations where we have not received written confirmation of
compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of
compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where

we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no
prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in
such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of
other ways including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project

Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how
to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.