The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice by Jonathan Quong.
How to understand a long-standing puzzle in political philosophy: the relationship between justice and legitimacy.
Can laws be unjust and yet remain, in some sense, morally legitimate? In this book, Jonathan Quong considers central issues in political philosophy through the lens of this single question. He explores and evaluates recent influential work on this topic and then proposes a novel approach of his own. The puzzle at the heart of his account is the phenomenon of legitimate injustice—laws and policies that are substantively unjust yet may be legitimately imposed by government officials. How can such laws be legitimate if, as some have argued, justice is the first virtue of social institutions?
Quong analyzes the work of those who deny that injustice committed by states can be legitimate simply by virtue of its democratic or procedural pedigree; the Kantian account of legitimate institutions and justice; instrumental approaches to political legitimacy; and the recent wave of work in democratic theory focused on its egalitarian character. Arguing that these analyses do not offer an adequate solution to the puzzle and that there are compelling reasons to revise or reject them, Quong lays out his view and explains the implications for more general theories of political morality. He argues that we can explain legitimate injustice by appeal to distributive justice. If political disagreement is inevitable, then unjust legislation is largely unavoidable; it constitutes a burden that must be distributed according to just principles. Quong’s novel and illuminating framework offers a unique introduction to crucial questions in political philosophy.
And from the reviews:
“Quong’s book both offers an excellent introduction to political philosophy for students, and makes original philosophical contributions to existing scholarly debates. This is a powerful, and rare, combination.”—Daniel Viehoff, University of California, Berkeley
“In this brilliant book, Jonathan Quong provides an accessible introduction to political philosophy by tackling one of its most difficult questions: How should we resolve apparent conflicts between justice and legitimacy? This book has something for everyone, from Quong’s expertly guided tour of many foundational questions and core positions in the area to his incisive original contributions.”—Christopher Heath Wellman, author of Rights and Resistance: Interpersonal and Political Implications of Our Rights
“Debates about political authority are often framed in terms of a stark choice between ‘justice-first’ views and rival accounts that treat legitimacy as having independent normative force. In this characteristically inventive, clearly written, accessible, and rigorously argued book, Jonathan Quong challenges this familiar framing. His recasting rejects the unappealing idea that democratic bodies possess a free-standing moral right to enact unjust laws simply in virtue of being democratic, while offering a compelling account of why some unjust democratic decisions can nonetheless be legitimate and enforceable.”—Christian Barry, Australian National University
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