A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Category: Governance

Democracy / Governance / Liberty / Public Philosophy

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Free Speech for Political Campaign Lies?

On Tuesday, November 5, citizens of the United States will vote for who they want to serve as their President for the next four years. They will also vote for federal congressional representatives as well as a host of other state and local government officials.


U.S. political campaigns—especially presidential campaigns—are exhausting. This is in part because they are much longer and more expensive than the political campaigns in many other nations.


Another reason why many have found the last three presidential campaigns exhausting is the sheer volume and brazenness of the lies told by Donald Trump and many other Republicans who have come to mimic his campaign style. Trump’s lies have reinforced partisan epistemology while simultaneously creating epistemic chaos that he seeks to use to his advantage.


He has successfully used lies to undermine public trust in U.S. elections. This is starkly exhibited by the fact that nearly 30% of Americans—including roughly two thirds of Republicans—say they believe that the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was stolen.


The reason that so many Americans believe this patent falsehood is because Trump and his allies have repeatedly told this lie. However, it seems that Trump and his allies don’t really believe it, given that they have been unwilling to make these same claims in court or in other contexts in which they could face legal sanctions for lying.


This is an example of the truth-revealing power of courts. The best explanation for why Trump and his co-conspirators refuse to make these false claims about the 2020 election in contexts where they realize that lying comes with significant legal consequences is that they know they are lying.


If significant legal consequences for lying are enough to stop Trump and his co-conspirators from lying in court, one might naturally conclude that the best course of action might be to create similarly significant legal consequences for lying as part of political campaigning. This is a reasonable thought, but it’s not that simple—at least not in the United States. This is because such a course of action conflicts with contemporary social and legal understandings of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s protection of free speech.

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Democracy / Governance / International / Social justice

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At last, justice for the Chagos Islanders?

Aerial photograph of the coconut plantation at East Point, Diego Garcia. Photograph shows strip of land between both ocean and lagoon, with the dilapidated plantation buildings sitting in a lawn surrounded by coconut trees.
Aerial photograph of an abandoned coconut plantation at East Point, Diego Garcia. See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Last week, the news that the UK has agreed to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius was widely reported. The agreement was denounced by many in the British press and political establishment – including by all current candidates for leadership of the Conservative Party. On the other hand, in other quarters the deal was greeted with cautious optimism. US President Joe Biden welcomed the agreement as a “clear demonstration that … countries can overcome longstanding historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes”. In a joint statement, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth called it “a seminal moment in our relationship and a demonstration of our enduring commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes and the rule of law”.

Among Chagossians the feelings seem more mixed. Some see it as a step in the right direction, suggesting that Mauritius is more likely to put resettlement plans in place. Others, however, have criticised the fact that, even in a decision like this, Chagossians have been systemically excluded from the discussion. One group representing Chagossians in the UK, Mauritius and the Seychelles claimed that “Chagossians have learned this outcome [of the negotiations] from the media and remain powerless and voiceless in determining our own future and the future of our homeland”. Others, speaking to the BBC, expressed frustration that, once again, decisions about their future were made without their input.

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Democracy / Distribution / Economics / General / Governance / Punishment / Social justice

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From the Vault: Justice, Democracy, and Society

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2023-24 season. 

A person casts a vote during the 2007 French presidential election. Rama, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons

Here are a few highlights from this year’s writing on a wide range of issues relating to justice, society and democratic systems:

Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2024-25 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Democracy / General / Governance

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Protecting Territorial Minorities: Defensive Federalism

In this post Marc Sanjaume-Calvet (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), discusses the role of federalism as a way of protecting from the tyranny of the majority, safeguarding both against the ills of centralised power and territorial self-government. The reflections in this post stems from his recently published book, coedited with Professor Ferran Requejo (UPF), Defensive Federalism Protecting Territorial Minorities from the “Tyranny of the Majority” (2023, Routledge).

Image by George Becker from Pexels
Image by George Becker from Pexels
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Environment / Governance / Moral values / Technology

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Driving for Values

Smart cities are full of sensors and collect large amounts of data. One reason for doing so is to get real-time information about traffic flows. A next step is to steer the traffic in a way that contributes to the realisation of values such as safety and sustainability. Think of steering cars around schools to improve the safety of children, or of keeping certain areas car-free to improve air quality. Is it legitimate for cities to nudge their citizens to make moral choices when participating in traffic? Would a system that limits a person’s options for the sake of improving quality of life in the city come at the cost of restricting that person’s autonomy? In a transdisciplinary research project, we (i.e., members of the ESDiT programme and the Responsible Sensing Lab) explored how a navigation app that suggests routes based on shared values, would affect users’ experiences of autonomy. We did so by letting people try out speculative prototypes of such an app on a mobile phone and ask them questions about how they experienced different features of the app. During several interviews and a focus group, we gained insights about the conditions under which people find such an app acceptable and about the features that increase or decrease their feeling of autonomy.

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Democracy / General / Governance / Health

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Why policymakers should care about post-truth

Post-truth is often viewed as a threat to public affairs such as vaccination policy, climate change denialism, or the erosion of public discourse. Yet combating post-truth is rarely viewed as a priority for policymakers, and the preferred ways of combating it usually take the form of localised epistemic interventions such as fact-checking websites or information campaigns.

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General / Governance / Rights / Technology

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What Claims Do We Have Over Our Google Search Profiles?

This is a guest post by Hannah Carnegy-Arbuthnott (University of York).

We’ve all done things we regret. It used to be possible to comfort ourselves with the thought that our misadventures would soon be forgotten. In the digital age, however, not only is more of our personal information captured and recorded, search engines can also serve up previously long-forgotten information at the click of a button.

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Democracy / Distribution / Economics / General / Governance / Public Philosophy

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How Should We Understand NIMBYism?

In this post, Travis Quigley (U. Arizona) discusses his article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy  about the issues at stake and justifications for and against restrictive zoning policies.

You might think that zoning policy should be politically boring. Instead, there is a high-stakes and high-intensity debate between defenders of restrictive zoning regulations, which currently set aside huge swaths of land for single-family houses, and those who wish to abolish most such restrictions. Defenders of restrictive zoning often are called NIMBYs, for Not In My Backyard; reformers are then called YIMBYs, for Yes In My Backyard. As such things go, each term can be an insult or a point of pride, depending on who’s speaking. In the housing context, the rationale of increasing supply to decrease prices is pitted against neighborhood preservation; the climate context pits ecological conservation against large-scale climate change mitigation projects. The two issues intersect: new, dense housing is far more energy efficient. I focus especially on residential zoning here.   

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Democracy / Governance / International

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Confucius’s Mistake, and Plato’s

This year I decided to put some Chinese philosophy on our curriculum, and I’ve been enjoying getting to know that tradition. But there’s something frustrating about classical Chinese political philosophy. It’s the same thing I find so irritating about Plato.

The wisest should rule. This is the core of Plato’s political philosophy. It’s an idea shared by Confucius and indeed most of the classical Chinese tradition. But I think it’s largely meaningless.

The ancient philosophical beard: who wore it better?

Plato presents rule by the wise as the answer to a question of constitutional theory. Who should rule? Ancient Greek thought gives a menu of options such as:

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Children / Education / Gender / General / Governance / Health / Liberty

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How could paternalism ever be a good thing?

NobodyWantsToGoWhereIWantToLeadThem.png

Recently, as I was discussing with a friend of mine, the conversation brought us to the issue of paternalism. Taking the bad habit of playing the philosopher’s role, I said something like “You know, paternalism is actually not always wrong.” My friend reacted very surprised – as if I had said “You know, patriarchy is actually not always wrong.” And as it happens, for her, “paternalism” and “patriarchy” were closely linked – which I had never considered before. (more…)