Thinking and Deciding

Chapter 17
Fairness and justice
This chapter and the next concern two common kinds of moral decision problems
that have been studied extensively, both normatively and descriptively. The next
chapter concerns decisions made by several people, each facing a conflict between
what is best for the self and what is best for others. The present chapter is about
the allocation of rewards and punishments: who gets what. Examples of such allocation
decisions are these: How should a university allocate financial aid to its
students? When organs for transplantation are scarce, who should get them? How
should criminal penalties depend on the crime? When a product injures a customer
or the environment, how much should the company pay as a penalty, if anything?
How should salary levels be determined within an organization, within a country,
across the world? How should taxes be levied? We call such questions matters of
fairness, justice, or equity. I shall use these terms interchangeably.
Sometimes these decisions are made by people who are not directly affected by
the allocation — judges who assign penalties to criminals or professors who assign
grades to students. At other times, allocation decisions are made by the affected
parties, as in treaties between nations, agreements between buyers and sellers, or
plans among roommates or family members on the division of the housework.
As usual, we shall be concerned with both normative and descriptive accounts.
At issue is what it means to be fair, and how real decisions compare to the normative
standard of fairness. Utilitarianism — a normative theory introduced in the last
chapter — holds that fairness is whatever yields the best overall consequences in the
long run, summed across everyone. Alternative normative theories hold that fairness
is an extra consideration, beyond consequences. These alternatives often work better
than utilitarianism as descriptive accounts, in many cases. This is not surprising, because
quite a few of the alternative theories were derived by philosophers consulting
their own intuitions about such cases (“to each according to his contribution,” for
example).
Following our intuitions about justice often helps to maximize utility. For example,
the principle “Grades should be based on the quality of work done” embodies
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