Fish- Blog Post 6

In reading Shelby’s book, Dark Ghettos, it became clear that he differed from Rawls in the belief that achieving constitutional essentials would, at a minimum, allow for states to reach the threshold of tolerable injustice. Rawls believes that fulfilling the constitutional essentials can help states reach the threshold of minimum justice while Shelby believes it would not be enough. Reading Berg’s paper, “Bright Lines in Juvenile Justice,” I returned to the question of what the “threshold” for justice actually is, and beyond that if a true state of justice is achievable beyond the threshold. As Berg asserts again and again, “when we employ bright lines, our imperfect justice gets a little more imperfect” (Berg 13). And, unlike Rawls, Berg is explicit about the fact that her ideal theory is “end-state theory, which sets out the best version of some subject, the goal we should be trying to achieve” (Berg 7).

Because of her use of end-state theory, Berg raises a contentious point about the potential of humanity. If her ideal theory is truly meant to set out the ultimate goal society hopes to achieve, but still includes the stark reality that injustice will persist, it both agrees and disagrees with Rawls. This is because, regarding her agreement with Rawls, he does seem to accept that perfect justice is not so easily achieved. In identifying the priority rule relative to his account of justice as fairness, Rawls explains that “The principles of justice are to be ranked in lexical order and therefore liberty can be restricted only for the sake of liberty” (Rawls 220). This implies that Rawls accepts that injustice can never fully go away, or at least it cannot go away quickly. He also implicitly accepts that certain liberties have to be sacrificed. In moving towards greater justice, a sort of hierarchical ranking of liberties must be enforced. In alignment with Berg, there is an acceptance of tolerable injustice so long as the mechanisms in place are justified in some way. For Berg, that is how bright lines are justified; for Rawls, that justification is through the ranking of liberties and prioritizing the least advantaged.

Berg does also disagree with Rawls in an important way. While Rawls seems to accept that justice is not easy to achieve, he does seem to think a truly just society is possible to build while Berg does not. He asserts that “the ideal part presents a conception of a just society that we are to achieve if we can” (Rawls 216). In contrast, Berg writes that “When we recognize the constraints this places on the ideal basic structure, we’ll see that truly ideal justice is impossible” (Berg 2). So while Rawls is not as explicit as Berg in believing it is possible to achieve a truly ideal justice, because he does not apply end-state theory he arguably does not have to make as strong a claim as Berg. This creates a certain ambiguity over whether or not true justice is actually possible to achieve and further confuses what constitutes passing the “threshold” of justice. While both Berg and Rawls agree the threshold allows for considerable injustice to exist, knowing where the line needs to be drawn is a difficult, if not impossible, task. And, if true justice can be reached as Rawls seems to believe, at what point does that happen beyond the threshold?