The Anatomy of Justice: On the Shape, Substance, and Power of Liberal Egalitaria

<em>The Anatomy of Justice</em> argues for a reorientation in liberal egalitarian theorizing about justice. Gina Schouten argues that the orientation she proposes supports compelling resolutions to longstanding disputes and difficulties internal to egalitarianism, as well as compelling defenses of liberalism against feminist and egalitarian critics. <p/> On the orthodox approach, a theory of liberal egalitarian justice comprises a set of <em>normative principles</em> to guide the design and workings of social institutions. Schouten argues that we should instead think of theory's most important product as <em>evaluative discernment.</em> Theorizing should aim to discern with as much precision as possible the achievements, or values, by realization of which a society can be more rather than less just. Schouten offers a weighted specification of the values of justice, which she calls "the anatomy of justice," and she makes the case for the anatomy by letting it flex its muscles. <p/> First, the anatomy of justice resolves difficulties internal to liberal egalitarianism, in part by deflating longstanding debates, like the debate about whether equality is fundamentally a distributive or a relational value. <p/> Second, the anatomy provides systematic and plausible guidance for addressing injustice. By precisifying the values of justice, the anatomy supports a unified liberal egalitarianism that <em>could</em> be developed to describe the ideally just society, but that also, and m