Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T08:30:32.751Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Let them Eat Chances: Probability and Distributive Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

David Wasserman
David Wasserman
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Jon Elster reports that in 1940, and again in 1970, the U.S. draft lottery was challenged for falling short of the legally mandated ‘random selection’ (1989, pp. 45–6). On both occasions, the physical mixing of the lots appeared to be incomplete, since the birth dates were clustered in a way that would have been extremely unlikely if the lots were fully mixed. There appears to have been no suspicion on either occasion that the deficiency in the mixing was intended, known, or believed to favor or disfavor any identifiable group. If the selection was non-random in the way charged, Elster asks, was it unfair?

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , April 1996 , pp. 29 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arneson, Richard. 1988. ‘Equality and equal opportunity for welfare’. Philosophical Studies, 54:79–93Google Scholar
Broome, John. 1990. ‘Fairness’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplemental Vol. 91:87–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, John. 1984. ‘Uncertainty and Fairness’. The Economic Journal, 94:624–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elster, Jon. 1989. ‘Taming change: randomization in individual and social decisions’. In Solomonic Judgements: Studies in the Limitations of Rationality. Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1975. ‘Duality’. In The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Induction, and Statistical Inference. Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Kornhauser, Lewis A. and Sager, Lawrence G.. 1988. ‘Just Lotteries’. Rationality and Society, 27:483–516Google Scholar
Sher, George. 1980. ‘What makes a lottery fair?’ Nous, 14:203–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar