According to luck egalitarianism, it is not unfair when people are disadvantaged by choices they are responsible for. This implies that those who are disadvantaged by choices that prevent disadvantage to others are not eligible for compensation. This is counterintuitive. We argue that the problem such cases pose for luck egalitarianism reveals an important distinction between responsibility for creating disadvantage and responsibility for distributing disadvantage which has hitherto been overlooked. We develop and defend a version of luck egalitarianism which only (...) holds people responsible for creating disadvantage. This revision enables luck egalitarianism to offer compensation to those who are disadvantaged by preventing disadvantage to others, like dependent caretakers, without compromising the responsibility–sensitivity at the heart of luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

According to luck egalitarianism, it is not unfair when people are disadvantaged by choices they are responsible for. This implies that those who are disadvantaged by choices that prevent disadvantage to others are not eligible for compensation. This is counterintuitive. We argue that the problem such cases pose for luck egalitarianism reveals an important distinction between responsibility for creating disadvantage and responsibility for distributing disadvantage which has hitherto been overlooked. We develop and defend a version of luck egalitarianism which only (...) holds people responsible for creating disadvantage. This revision enables luck egalitarianism to offer compensation to those who are disadvantaged by preventing disadvantage to others, like dependent caretakers, without compromising the responsibility–sensitivity at the heart of luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

The exposure of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to risks in the context of epidemics is significant. While traditional medical ethics offers the thought that these dangers may limit the extent to which a duty to care is applicable in such situations, it has less to say about what we might owe to medical professionals who are disadvantaged in these contexts. Luck egalitarianism, a responsibility-sensitive theory of distributive justice, appears to fare particularly badly in that regard. If we want (...) to maintain that medical professionals are responsible for their decisions to help, cure and care for the vulnerable, luck egalitarianism seems to imply that their claim of justice to medical attention in case of infection is weak or non-existent. The article demonstrates how a recent interpretation of luck egalitarianism offers a solution to this problem. Redefining luck egalitarianism as concerned with responsibility for creating disadvantages, rather than for incurring disadvantage as such, makes it possible to maintain that medical professionals are responsible for their choices and that those infected because of their choice to help fight epidemics have a full claim of justice to medical attention. (shrink)

The discussion on mandatory turnout, which controversially introduces coercion at the heart of the electoral process, illustrates a dilemma between increasing voter turnout on the one hand and avoiding coercion on the other. If successful, a recent proposal by Elliott solves this dilemma as it removes the compulsory element of mandatory turnout. Specifically, Elliot reinterprets the policy’s purpose as (a) a pre-commitment device for those who believe that they have a duty to vote and (b) a nudge to the surveillance (...) of politics for those who do not believe this. We critically evaluate Elliott’s novel intervention in the debate and argue that it is ultimately unsuccessful. Mandatory turnout can be interpreted as neither a pre-commitment device nor a nudge. Moreover, we present a more promising and novel solution to the dilemma: a genuine state-administered pre-commitment device with respect to voting that also nudges citizens to vote and seems _prima facie_ attractive. (shrink)

This paper argues that according to the influential version of legal moralism presented by Moore infidelity should all-things-considered be criminalized. This is interesting because criminalizing infidelity is bound to be highly controversial and because Moore’s legal moralism is a prime example of a self-consciously liberal legal moralism, which aims to yield legislative implications that are quite similar to liberalism, while maintaining that morality as such should be legally enforced. Moore tries to make his theory yield such implications, first by claiming (...) that the scope of our moral obligations is much more limited than legal moralists have traditionally claimed, and second by allowing for the possibility that the goodness of legally enforcing morality is often outweighed by the badness of limiting citizens’ morally valuable autonomy and spending scarce resources on enforcement. If Moore is successful in this, legal moralism is strengthened because it becomes immune to many of the most damaging liberal objections. By showing that despite making those moves Moore’s legal moralism is still committed to criminalizing infidelity, a manifestly illiberal implication for legislation, it is established that Moore is unsuccessful in creating a liberal legal moralism, and Moore’s failure in this regard raises questions about whether there can be such a thing as a liberal legal moralism. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that criminalization creates a prudential reason to refrain from the criminalized conduct in order to avoid punishment, and prudence is the wrong reason to refrain from wrongdoing. According to Michael S. Moore, these facts should lead us to conclude that the criminalization of wrongful conduct corrupts motives by making some who would otherwise have refrained from wrongdoing for the right reason, refrain from wrongdoing only out of prudence. This paper argues that and provide no reason to (...) believe that criminalization corrupts motives, but should instead lead us to conclude that the criminalization of wrongful conduct obscures motives by making it harder to identify those who refrain from wrongdoing for the right reason. The paper then goes on to argue that the badness of obscuring motives is a pro tanto reason against criminalizing wrongdoing. (shrink)