Disability and Doing Justice

Abstract

Christopher Riddle considers some difficulties associated with attempting to make disabled people’s lives better or to do justice by them. Specifically, doing justice often risks stigmatizing people by making them the targets of a justice-based intervention. Even if one has the correct theory of justice, implementing changes that aim to make the world more just, e.g. for disabled people, could implicitly or explicitly express harmful attitudes. To illustrate this general point Riddle considers how efforts to implement various theories of justice can be demeaning to disabled people. He concludes, “Our attempts to articulate a conception of justice that promotes the well-being of people with disabilities and other marginalized individuals are aimed to do good. But … we need to be more cognizant of the process of ‘doing justice.’”

I would like to thank Sophie-Grace Chappell, Jessica Flanigan, David Gordon, Terry Price, Thomas Sturm, Jonathan Wolff, and audiences from McGill University, Concordia University, Université de Montréal, and Université du Québec à Montréal for helpful suggestions and comments.