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Published Article / This paper seeks to problematise the discourse of social justice in education and engage educational practitioners in tensions that exist in understanding the theory of social justice. I argue that social justice in education is constructed in a way that seeks to disturb not only the tensions of conceptualisation but the traditional power relations present in educational practice as well. This paper is influenced by an eclectic mix of theoretical sources; I have adopted, as a critical lens, poststructuralist, postmodernist, feminist as well as postcolonial theories to interrogate the social justice discourse. While the paper argues that the concept social justice is dynamic and fluid, it attempts to draw the discomforting truths or tensions of conceptualizing social justice. The debates around the conceptualisation of social justice will enable us to better understand the theoretical position which would take us closer to understand social justice in education.

The thesis approaches the question of distributive justice through an analysis of legal rights, focusing in particular on constitutional rights. In Part I (Chapters 1, 2, 3) conceptual issues of the meaning of rights are considered. The concept of a right is analyzed generally as (1) a claim to something; (2) which is logically correlated with a duty; and (3) which is justified, in the case of constitutional rights, by reference to constitutional grounds. The more specific Hohfeldian analysis of legal rights is then coordinated with the general account. Analyzing rights as justified claims leads to the question of what counts as constitutional justification which is in turn intimately tied to a correct account of judicial review. In Part II (Chapters 4,5) a definitive account of judicial review is attempted. After examining the logical base of legal reasoning and concluding that it is essentially dialectical, the major normative theories of judicial review are considered. In particular natural law, legal realism, reasoned elaboration, and legal positivism are considered and all are rejected in part. An attempt is then made to incorporate significant elements of each in a general theory using the coherence methodology of Ronald Dworkin. Finally the results are applied to a paradigm of the sort of judicial reasoning that seems to capture the elements picked out in the earlier analysis. It is argued that the thesis advanced here explains and justifies the judicial reasoning used in that case (Griswold v. Connecticut).

Student Number : 9307680N - MA research report - School of Philosophy - Faculty of Humanities / Many individuals working in South Africa earn extremely low wages. I briefly discuss these low wages, and examine their implications for the shareholders (owners and controllers of businesses) in South Africa. I argue that shareholders, in particular, have a moral duty to increase the absolute level of the wages of their lowest paid workers. In this essay I choose to develop this position in the context of Kantian distributive justice. I seek to join distributive justice and Kantianism together to evaluate the moral status of the lowest paid workers. I propose a just means of allocating the benefits of wages according to the work performed that shows respect for workers’ autonomy. Current South African stakeholder theory includes ‘equity’ claims arising from compensatory justice issues. However, based on the arguments in this essay, I believe we can see that there is also a definite independent moral duty in distributive justice for shareholders to increase the amounts that they spend on their worst-off employees. This spend is not necessarily only the wage costs for these employees, but is also on self-empowerment tools such as education and community services with which employees can build their life plans.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 371-407).

The central doctrine of sufficientarianism is that there is a certain threshold below which people are said to be objectively "badly-off," and that providing benefits to people who fall into this category has a special moral urgency. A big part of sufficientarianism's success as a theory, then, relies on the ability to define the threshold in a manner that is non-arbitrary and that justifies a large difference in moral consideration between people who are on opposite sides of the threshold. This thesis examines some attempts to define such a threshold, and eventually concludes that no such threshold is available to us. However, while sufficientarianism may not work as a theory, sufficiency thresholds remain useful due to their practical ability to give useful instruction to policy makers in order to assist in resource distribution and the promotion of social justice. / Graduate

Human Genetic Enhancement (HGE) has the potential to provide great benefits to a large number of people in terms of alleviating inherited disease and disability and maximizing individual liberty. There are many arguments against research and application of this new technology based on a variety of grounds, including both deontological and consequentialist objections. In this thesis I examine arguments from both of these positions and argue that neither offers a satisfactory justification for prohibiting research into HGE nor do they demonstrate that the application of the knowledge gained from such research is necessarily wrong. I also suggest that there is a strong argument in favor of HGE in that it may offer a way to reduce the amount of disadvantage currently present in our society as a result of genetic disease and disability by addressing the genetic causes of these conditions. Further, I argue that the pursuit of HGE is necessary in order to promote individual liberty and promote equality of opportunity. Finally, I argue that by examining principles that require us to promote individual liberty we can establish the categories of enhancements which we should publicly fund and those that should merely be permissible. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-18 17:05:35.143

G.A. Cohen’s critique of John Rawls holds that it is insufficient to approach the problem of justice as one of principles governing laws and institutions alone. Instead, an appropriate social ethos must motivate the citizens to act from these principles in order to ensure that society is characterized by equality. The following will argue that Cohen’s concerns with Rawls are well-founded. However, even citizens motivated by a sense of justice will possess motives that are non-egoistic, yet inegalitarian in effect. Therefore, just citizens should not be expected to enact the same principles as just institutions. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2012-10-02 08:20:09.804

Thesis (M.Phil.) - University of St Andrews, January 2007.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, November, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p.87-88)