George Letsas (University College London – Faculty of Laws) has posted Structural Injustice and The Law: A Philosophical Framework on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
What is the role of law in injustices that philosophers call structural? Iris Marion Young argued that law is unable to capture the wrong of structural injustice because law is premised on a liability model of responsibility that focuses on individuals. Contrary to Young, I argue that law is the baseline against which we can make sense of moral claims regarding collective responsibility, including the wrong of structural injustice. Young's claim that law employs a liability model of responsibility is based on an unduly narrow picture of law. This is because law is ubiquitous in patterns of social interaction, by either protecting them as legally permissible or frustrating them as impermissible. The paper argues that any claim that someone is the victim of structural injustice necessarily implies both an interpretation and a critique of existing law. Political philosophers who are interested in matters of structural injustices should take law more seriously in their analysis.
Highly recommended.