PRESS RELEASE
29 April 2009
In the wake of the publication of the Government’s Equalitiy Bill, a conference in Oxford today organised by the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society will examine the issue of ‘Equality and Personal Responsibility in the New Social Contract’.
The conference, organised in collaboration with the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University, will see a leading Professor of Economic Philosophy argue that economic development should not be measured in terms of economic growth, but in terms of distributive justice, as defined by contemporary egalitarian theory.
In a lecture at 5.30 today at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, Professor John Roemer of Yale University will open the conference with his analysis of egalitarian theory in the new era of responsibility heralded by the economic crisis and the change of US administration. The lecture will be followed by a two-day workshop in which a roundtable of academics and policymakers will address the relative roles of the citizen and the state in achieving equality, specifically in education and healthcare.
On Thursday 30 April, Julian LeGrand, former Senior Policy Adviser to Tony Blair and one of the principal architects of the UK Government’s current public service reforms introducing choice and competition into health care and education, will outline his vision of state paternalism. He will argue that the state should intervene in individuals' autonomy to protect them from the consequences of their own decisions, specifically when the individuals concerned suffer from what he terms reasoning failure.
On Wednesday 1 May, Yuli Tamir, the Israeli Minister of Education (2006-2009) will respond to the change in US administration in her proposals for education reform, arguing that the state must act to undermine social and educational inequalities, and limit the influence of all social institutions, including the family, which reinforce these inequalities.
A full transcript of the lecture and workshop papers are available on request.
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5.30pm, 28 April 2009
Mordan Hall, St Hugh's College, Oxford
Public Lecture:
'Equality in an Era of Responsibility’
John Roemer, Professor of Political Science and Economics, Yale University
Professor Roemer will argue that Rawlsian veil-of-ignorance thought experiments will not produce the recommendations that egalitarians desire, and that a more direct and non-contractarian approach must be taken to integrate responsibility into egalitarian theory.
29 April-1 May 2009
St Hugh's College, Oxford
Workshop: (invitation only)
'Equality and Personal Responsibility in the New Social Contract'
One of the foremost challenges of the modern social contract is to reconcile two of its fundamental features: equality and reciprocity. This workshop draws on case studies from health and education to address the relationship between egalitarianism and reciprocity.
For further information, including details of the workshop programme and participants, please visit: http://www.fljs.org/Nextevent
• Professor John Roemer is the Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Professor of Political Science and Economics at Yale University. He is famous for his work in the fields of economic philosophy and distributive justice. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and has been a Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. His research concerns political economy, and distributive justice.
In recent publications, he argues that society must take the action necessary to ensure that an individual's economic (or welfare) prospects are dependent on the effort that one exerts in life rather than attributes such as race, gender and the economic class to which one is born. He claims that democracy as a political mechanism cannot guarantee this equality of opportunity concept of justice. Publications include: Political Competition, 2001; Equality of Opportunity, 1998, Theories of Distributive Justice, 1996.
• Julian Le Grand is the Richard Titmuss Professor of Social Policy, LSE. From 2003 to 2005 he was Senior Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister. Professor Le Grand is Chairman of Health England: the National Reference Group for Health and Well Being for the Department of Health; and Chairman of the Social Care Practices Working Group for the Department for Education and Skills. He is also a member of the Group of Societal Policy Analysts advising President Jose Barroso of the European Commission.
He was the originator of several recent developments in UK and international social policy, including the ‘baby bond’ or Child Trust Fund, the Partnership Scheme for funding long-term care endorsed by the 2005 Wanless Report Securing Good Care for Older People, the Disadvantage Premium for the education of children from less well-off families and for looked-after children, and the Social Work Practice proposed in the 2006 Department for Education and Skills Green Paper, Care Matters.
• Yuli Tamir is Professor of Political Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University, and, until April 2009, Israeli Minister of Education.
• The Foundation for Law, Justice and Society is an independent institution affiliated with the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford.
• Founded in 2005, the mission of the Foundation is to study, reflect on and promote an understanding of the role that law plays in society. This is achieved through our programmes examining the role of courts in the making of public policy, the social contract, and rule of law in China.
• The Foundation draws on the work of scholars and researchers, and aims to make its work easily accessible to professionals in government, business, or the law.
http://www.fljs.org
• For more information, please contact Phil Dines, Communications Manager:
+44 (0)7809 219 543 (mobile)
+44 (0)1865 284433 (day)
phil.dines@fljs.org