Stephen Kershnar

THE INHERITANCE-BASED CLAIM TO REPARATIONS

I. INTRODUCTIONThe notion that the current descendants of slaves are owed compensation for slavery is one that receives widespread discussion and support. For example, in 1989, Representative John Conyers of Michigan proposed legislation that would create a commission to explore the effects of slavery on both African-Americans and the United States. More recently, Randall Robinson, in The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, argued that an important step toward healing racial division and helping poor African-Americans is to compensate blacks for slavery.Randall Robinson, THE DEBT: WHAT AMERICA OWES TO BLACKS (2001). Also, a well-known group of civil-rights and class-action attorneys, including Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree and Johnnie Cochran, is putting together a lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of slaves.Reparations for Slavery, 1 (CBS News television broadcast, 2000), available from www.cbsnews. com/stories/2000/11/04/national/main246998.shtml. The debt on some estimates involves trillions of dollars.Larry Neal and James Marketti estimate that the value of unpaid income to slaves amounts to

GIVING CAPITALISTS THEIR DUE

1.4 trillion and

Are the Descendants of Slaves Owed Compensation for Slavery

3.4 trillion respectively. Dinesh D’Souza, THE END OF RACISM 69 n.18 (1995) citing Richard F. America, ed., THE WEALTH OF RACES: THE PRESENT VALUE OF BENEFITS FROM PAST INJUSTICES (1990). In this paper, I argue that the descendants of slaves were not harmed by slavery since they owe their existence to slavery. I then recognize that they may have a claim to compensation based on their having inherited their ancestors’ (i.e., the slaves’) claim to compensation. I argue that the inheritance-based claim is defeated by a number of concerns, particularly doubt surrounding the existence and amount of this inheritance-based claim, concerns about offsets (sums that must be subtracted from compensation), and problems concerning the identity of any contemporary public or private entity that owes compensation. Note that in this essay I will not discuss harms that were not the result of enslavement and hence I set aside some of the claims put forth on behalf of current African-Americans.

The Moral Rules of Trash Talking: Morality and Ownership

In general, capitalists deserve profits and losses for their contribution to the general welfare. Market imperfections and the range of permissible prices (at least within the boundaries of exploitation) prevent the alignment from being a direct one, but the connection generally holds. In the context of the market, this thesis preserves the central place of moral responsibility in moral desert. It also satisfies the fittingness and proportionality conditions of moral desert and provides a backward-looking and pre-institutional ground of it. In addition, the focus on contribution unifies several different types of act-based desert, specifically deserved profits and losses, deserved punishment, and deserved wages. Hence, to the extent that desert-satisfaction is relevant in the selection of an economic system, this result strengthens the case for capitalism.

The Most Valuable Player

The compensatory-justice justification of affirmative action requires a comparison of the actual world in which the injured person lives with a relevantly similar possible world in which this person lives but where the unjust injuring act never occurred, in order to identify the degree of harm brought about by the unjust injurious act. The problem is that some unjust injuring acts, particularly acts of slavery, led to intercourse and the later creation of the ancestors of many members of minority groups. Hence, there is no possible world in which these individuals exist and in which the injustice, e.g., slavery, did not occur. As a result, the counterfactual test does not allow us to measure or even understand the existence of a compensatable injury to these persons. I provide an inheritance-based account of compensation that escapes this problem.

For Ownership Theory: A Response to Nicholas Dixon

Professional sports such as the NFL and NBA prohibit trash talking. Here is the NFL’s rule on taunting.(c) The use of baiting or taunting acts or words that engender ill will between teams.(d) Indi...

No Responsibility No Morality

1979 Lisa Brummel 1980 Lisa Brummel 1981 Lisa Brummel 1982 Terry Durkin 1983 Yvonne Zylan 1984 Debbie Siegel 1985 Patti Carbery 1986 Patti Carbery 1987 Nancy Harthun 1988 Bonnie Coutu 1994 Jennifer Surface 1995 Jennifer Surface 1996 Kelli Bartlett 1997 Amy Scriven, Mandy Taft 1998 Kristen Maturo 1999 Monica Lebron 2000 Carlie Ware 2001 Jesseka Bartholomew 2002 Jesseka Bartholomew 2003 Jesseka Bartholomew & Beth Pavlicek 2004 Leah Kelley 2005 Kristy Kwiatkowski 2006 Megan Enyeart & Katie Edwards 2007 Rebecca Wojciak 2008 Aracelis Torres 2009 Deanna DiBernardi & Megan Enyeart 2010 Ashley Sloan 2011 Chelsey Dunham 2012 Meg Johnson 2013 Sarah Onorato 2014 Tori Balta T E A M A W A R D S

Problems with Forfeiture

One person trash-talks a second if and only if the first intentionally insults the second during competition. One person insults a second only if the first tries to offend the second. This account of an insult is controversial because, on some accounts, it is possible to inadvertently offend someone. Here is the argument for the thesis (Table 1). The above theory sounds implausible. Surely, the conditions under which a player may insult another do not depend on what the owners arbitrarily decide. Such an approach doesn’t appear to be true in the workplace, bar, or sandlot, so it is hard to see why it should be true in sport. With this general skepticism in mind, let us turn to Nicholas Dixon’s objections.2 Dixon rejects my argument because trash-talking conflicts with the internal value of a sport, violates a right, and degrades the person toward whom the trash-talking is directed. Dixon’s arguments here and in the literature are important, insightful, and fit nicely with Kantian and Aristotelian lines of thought.

Rights Fail and Why This Explains the Other Failures

This chapter argues that if individuals are not morally responsible, then there is no morality. By no morality, I mean that there are no right or wrong actions, no good or bad states of affairs, and no other things with moral properties or, at perhaps less sweepingly, we do not know whether there are such things. Here I focus on right and wrong actions. My main argument in this chapter is that if people are not morally responsible, then there is no morality as it relates to matters that are up to us or, at least, we don’t know whether there is morality on such matters. When it comes to the right, either consequentialism or non-consequentialism is true. Consider consequentialism. If we don’t know whether determinism is true, then we don’t know whether there are acts that produce more good than any other act available to the agent and hence we don’t know whether there are obligatory or wrong acts. Consider non-consequentialism. If non-consequentialism is true, then people have rights and rights protect autonomy. The notion that non-consequentialism depends on rights rests on a consideration of the most plausible non-consequentialist theories. The notion that rights protect autonomy depends on a theory of what best fits and justifies rights. Autonomy is inextricably linked to moral responsibility and, as argued above, people do not have it.

Responsibility Revisionists and Skeptics

The best theory of killing under non-consequentialism, forfeiture theory, has serious problems. At the heart of morality is an attempt to tell people how to behave when there is conflict (for example, threats and violence). If forfeiture is the best non-consequentialist theory and it fails to provide an adequate account of conflict, then non-consequentialism fails at a task that is central to morality.