----- Original Message ----- From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>
> >Which paper are you speaking of?
>
> Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and Justice, 17 Legal Studies
1997. It's
> sort of the ethical countrerpart to my ideology paper.
>
===========
This version?
< http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/marxism/RRJustice.htm >
> >
> >It may mean that when powerful factions of lawyers, both in and out
of
> >government, use sophisticated argumentation strategies to undermine
> >due process itself because it advances their political and economic
> >interests and that this is done from within the very terms of
liberal
> >discourse itself and that discourse is incapable of proving them
wrong
> >precisely because there is no pie-in-the-sky basis for adjudicating
a
> >determination of wrongdoing,
>
> Ah, that's exactly the topic of RRE. We are not stuck with the
dilemma you
> pose, either an arbitrary choice between incommensuable value
sysyems or an
> appeal to an impossible neutral Archimedean point.
=========
My concern is with the cumulativeness and interminableness that lurks in the possibilities of rupturing the equilibrium[s] because of non-arbitrary incommensurabilities. We should be as cautious about equilibrium arguments for justice as we are about equilibrium arguments in economics or ecology. I need to stop for the day, but I'll have another look at the essay when my mood shifts.
>However, your cri di
> coeur seems not to be a request for a philosophical justification,
but for
> another impossibility, a language taht is inappropribale by the bad
guys.
=======
No, I recognize the impossibility of the inappropriable language. I'm more concerned about how the adversarial proclivities of the legal and other professions, while in many contexts seem necessary, are now, themselves becoming imperialistic much as 'heterodox' economists and other social scientists rail against the rc-neoclassical school [also infatuated with equilibrium btw].
There was a cartoon in the latest New Yorker with the byline "It's been difficult as hell but I'm finally getting around to hating everyone again" or words very similar. It's the large scale consequences of this kind of rebound effect, so to speak, that is wreaking havoc on the emotional dimensions of democracy. I know that's a bit of reification, but I think it makes good shorthand; how about the ethos of democracy if it serves your needs better. The strategist-perpetrators of 9-11 will have won if the path dependency of our cynicism before that date suffers lock-in and amplification effects.
> It's no more a criticism of liberalism that its rhetoric can be
misused by
> Ashcroft than it is of socialism that its rhetoric can be misused
by, say
> Vyshinsky. Moreeover, the mere fact that Ashcroft--who hates
liberalism,
> btw--is able to deploy the language for illiberal ends means
nothing; in
> otherr circumstances, he'd be a Vyshinky, and be calling for what
both he
> and Vyshinky agree upon, Shoot the mad dogs!
=========
Gee I thought Brussels Sprouts were weapons enough :-)
>
>
>
> How are non-lawyers supposed to use the same
> >institutional means to get the camel out of the tent by which he
got
> >in?
>
> We lawyers are in the same situation.
>
> jks
========== Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.
Trying to see a photon at the end of the tunnel,
Ian