Sources & Extracts

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The basic notion behind compensation is part of ordinary morality; but application of common notions to concrete cases can become very complicated. In the following extract, James Nickel raises some of the questions that must be dealt with by any thorough treatment of the issues:

There are a number of difficulties involved in using considerations of compensatory justice to justify programs that use preferential policies to assist the disadvantaged. These include: (1) questions about whether compensatory benefits are owed only to those particular individuals who have been harmed substantially by discrimination and hardship or to all members of those groups that have been frequent targets of discrimination; (2) questions about whether a person who was once harmed by discrimination but who has overcome his losses through his own efforts still deserves compensation now; (3) questions about whether governments, companies, institutions, and individuals have obligations to compensate losses they did not cause; and (4) questions about how far back into the past the view of compensatory justice should extend.

Reference: See James Nickel, "Preferential Policies in Hiring and Admissions" in Reverse Discrimination edited by Barry Gross, p. 327.