Lesley A. Jacobs

Equality, adequacy, and stakes fairness: Retrieving the equal opportunities in education approach

Two approaches to making judgments about moral urgency in educational policy have prevailed in American law and public policy. One approach holds that educational policy should aspire to realizing equal opportunities in education for all. The other approach holds that educational policy should aspire to realizing adequate opportunities in education for all. Although the former has deep roots in American culture and its jurisprudence, a common narrative is that in recent years the equal opportunities approach has been displaced by the educational adequacy approach, which is said both to have enjoyed much greater success in the school financing litigation as well as to be theoretically more defensible. The present article is designed to make a contribution to the retrieval of the equal opportunities approach. It does so by sketching out a theory of equal opportunities in education organized around the idea of stakes fairness that can withstand the criticisms often made of that approach and by showing how that theory is better able than the educational adequacy approach to address the fairness of a more robust educational policy agenda that extends beyond school financing.

Bridging the Gap Between Individual and Collective Rights With the Idea of Integrity

The very idea of collective rights has for a long time now been regarded with suspicion by moral and political philosophers. In recent years, however, this attitude has become more difficult to sustain, for the language of collective rights has come to dominate some of the most contentious political issues of our day. Consider, for example, the controversy surrounding the alleged injustices suffered by the indigenous peoples of North America. The arguments that best capture the core of these allegations appeal to collective rights. These arguments maintain that the injustices commonly suffered by an indigenous people involve the violation of rights held collectively by them rather than by particular individuals.

Linking global trade and human rights : new policy space in hard economic times

Part I. Trade Governance and Human Rights: 1. Humanizing global economic governance Sol Picciotto 2. The promise of linking human rights and trade Ernest-Ulrich Petersmann 3. Free trade agreements and global policy space after the great recession Jorge Heine and Joseph Turcotte Part II. Global Protest and Innovation from Below: 4. From Seattle to occupy: the shifting focus of social protest Tomer Broude 5. Whats next for global labour? Power dynamics and industrial relations systems in a hyperglobalized world Daniel Drache 6. Global tobacco control and trade liberalization: new policy spaces? Lesley Jacobs Part III. Paradigm Shifts and Structural Change: 7. Business, policy spaces, and governance in India Kuldeep Mathur 8. Indias pharmaceutical industry: policy space that fosters technological capability Amit Ray and Saradindu Bhaduri Part IV. Contested Policy Spaces in Social Welfare: 9. Reducing poverty in Brazil: finding policy space for meeting developmental needs Kathryn Hochstetler 10. The global health policy agenda and shrinking policy spaces in the post crisis landscape Ron Labonte 11. The World Trade Organization and food security after the global food crises Matias Margulis Part V. Innovations in International Human Rights: 12. Decent work for domestic workers as a new policy space Adelle Blackett 13. Is there policy space for human rights linkages in Chinas trade and investment strategy? Ljiljana Biukovic Part VI. Chinas Evolving State Policy and Practices: 14. Human rights and social justice in China Pitman Potter 15. New policy space for collective bargaining in China Sarah Biddulph 16. Industrial relations in post-transition China: the challenges of inequality and social conflict Chang-Hee Lee.

A Vision of Equal Opportunity in Postsecondary Education

This chapter sets out a vision of equal postsecondary educational opportunities. The ideal that all children should have equal educational opportunities is a powerful one that has had currency for many years. Nearly sixty years ago, Chief Justice Warren of the United States Supreme Court expressed this ideal in his opinion in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka against racial segregation in public schools in 1954: “In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms” (1954: 493). Chief Justice Warren’s comment was directed toward opportunities for primary and secondary schooling. Today, it is possible to imagine his reasoning being extended to postsecondary or higher education.

The Second Wave of Analytical Marxism

The resurgence in Marxism among mainstream contemporary moral and political philosophers over the past decade or so has struck many people as ironic, for this development in academic philosophy has been paralleled by the collapse of so-called existing socialism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and the almost universal rejection of Marxism as a public philosophy elsewhere. This renewed philosophical interest in Marxism is a

The Enabling Model of Rights

The belief that state welfare programmes are justified because they enable many people to do what they could not otherwise have done is attractive. This article examines the claim that this belief flows logically from a particular account of what it means to have a right to do something. This enabling model of rights holds that rights can be violated in two ways: by interfering with people doing something they have a right to do and depriving the right-holders of the resources actually needed to do what they have a right to do. Having certain rights to do things can justify state action designed to provide people with the resources that enable them to do what they could not otherwise have done. However attractive this model of rights might be, it is unable to accommodate the possibility that an individual can have the right to do something which is the morally wrong thing to do.

Equal Opportunity and Gender Disadvantage

Recently, in Canada both the Federal Government and various provincial governments have introduced a series of measures intended to address gender inequalities in the workplace. These measures are of two basic types. Employment equity policies involve the implementation of affirmative action programmes designed to encourage the hiring and promotion of more women in, for example, the civil service. Pay equity policies have sought to institutionalize the principle of equal pay for work of equal value or, to use the American terminology, comparable worth. The aim of this paper is to resurrect the presently out of fashion view that the principles of affirmative action and comparative worth that underlie employment equity and pay equity can be defended on the grounds that they contribute to the realization of an ideal of equality of opportunity between men and women in Canadian society. This view, although once prevalent among those concerned with gender issues, has been pushed aside, largely because of doubts about the visionary depth of the ideal of equality of opportunity. It has been replaced instead by an ideal of equality of results which emphasizes the goal of reducing the gender wage gap. It is my intention here to formulate a principle of equality of opportunity that can incorporate recent feminist legal and political philosophy in a way that offers a promising way to analyze issues posed by gender inequalities in the workplace and, as a result, provide a clear rationale for the recent employment equity and pay equity initiatives in Canada.

Dealing Fairly with Winners and Losers in School: Reframing How to Think about Equality of Educational Opportunity 50 Years after the Coleman Report.

Although the policy and methodological legacy of Equality of Educational Opportunity, the so-called Coleman Report published by the US Department of Education in 1966, is widely recognized, the way in which it played a role in shaping theorizing about equality of educational opportunity has been less well-explored. This article reconsiders the Coleman Report in light of how it has contributed to the framing of how we think about the very idea of equality of educational opportunity and its normative capacity to evaluate the education system. The main argument is that the Coleman Report helped to crystallize the concept of equality of educational opportunity as being fundamentally about how education provides ladders of opportunity and enables upward mobility for socially disadvantaged students. This framing has, however, created certain normative blind spots that have seriously impeded its ability to engage certain issues in education. The normative blind spot singled out, in particular, is the competitive structure of the current education system – the school system is structured so that some children win, while some lose. The competitive nature of schools has often been challenged, from a wide range of perspectives, but rarely utilizing an equality of opportunity framework. Given this normative blind spot, the more constructive dimension of the article is to advance an alternative theory of equality of educational opportunity that is better able to function as a regulative ideal for competition in the education system, one that identifies standards or principles of fairness to guide policy on how to deal fairly with winners and losers.

Linking Global Trade and Human Rights: Paradigm Shifts and Structural Change

Part I. Trade Governance and Human Rights: 1. Humanizing global economic governance Sol Picciotto 2. The promise of linking human rights and trade Ernest-Ulrich Petersmann 3. Free trade agreements and global policy space after the great recession Jorge Heine and Joseph Turcotte Part II. Global Protest and Innovation from Below: 4. From Seattle to occupy: the shifting focus of social protest Tomer Broude 5. Whats next for global labour? Power dynamics and industrial relations systems in a hyperglobalized world Daniel Drache 6. Global tobacco control and trade liberalization: new policy spaces? Lesley Jacobs Part III. Paradigm Shifts and Structural Change: 7. Business, policy spaces, and governance in India Kuldeep Mathur 8. Indias pharmaceutical industry: policy space that fosters technological capability Amit Ray and Saradindu Bhaduri Part IV. Contested Policy Spaces in Social Welfare: 9. Reducing poverty in Brazil: finding policy space for meeting developmental needs Kathryn Hochstetler 10. The global health policy agenda and shrinking policy spaces in the post crisis landscape Ron Labonte 11. The World Trade Organization and food security after the global food crises Matias Margulis Part V. Innovations in International Human Rights: 12. Decent work for domestic workers as a new policy space Adelle Blackett 13. Is there policy space for human rights linkages in Chinas trade and investment strategy? Ljiljana Biukovic Part VI. Chinas Evolving State Policy and Practices: 14. Human rights and social justice in China Pitman Potter 15. New policy space for collective bargaining in China Sarah Biddulph 16. Industrial relations in post-transition China: the challenges of inequality and social conflict Chang-Hee Lee.

Linking Global Trade and Human Rights: China's Evolving State Policy and Practice

Part I. Trade Governance and Human Rights: 1. Humanizing global economic governance Sol Picciotto 2. The promise of linking human rights and trade Ernest-Ulrich Petersmann 3. Free trade agreements and global policy space after the great recession Jorge Heine and Joseph Turcotte Part II. Global Protest and Innovation from Below: 4. From Seattle to occupy: the shifting focus of social protest Tomer Broude 5. Whats next for global labour? Power dynamics and industrial relations systems in a hyperglobalized world Daniel Drache 6. Global tobacco control and trade liberalization: new policy spaces? Lesley Jacobs Part III. Paradigm Shifts and Structural Change: 7. Business, policy spaces, and governance in India Kuldeep Mathur 8. Indias pharmaceutical industry: policy space that fosters technological capability Amit Ray and Saradindu Bhaduri Part IV. Contested Policy Spaces in Social Welfare: 9. Reducing poverty in Brazil: finding policy space for meeting developmental needs Kathryn Hochstetler 10. The global health policy agenda and shrinking policy spaces in the post crisis landscape Ron Labonte 11. The World Trade Organization and food security after the global food crises Matias Margulis Part V. Innovations in International Human Rights: 12. Decent work for domestic workers as a new policy space Adelle Blackett 13. Is there policy space for human rights linkages in Chinas trade and investment strategy? Ljiljana Biukovic Part VI. Chinas Evolving State Policy and Practices: 14. Human rights and social justice in China Pitman Potter 15. New policy space for collective bargaining in China Sarah Biddulph 16. Industrial relations in post-transition China: the challenges of inequality and social conflict Chang-Hee Lee.