Enduring Injustice

Description

Governments today often apologize for past injustices and scholars increasingly debate the issue, with many calling for apologies and reparations. Others suggest that what matters is victims of injustice today, not injustices in the past. Spinner-Halev argues that the problem facing some peoples is not only the injustice of the past, but that they still suffer from injustice today. They experience what he calls enduring injustices, and it is likely that these will persist without action to address them. The history of these injustices matters, not as a way to assign responsibility or because we need to remember more, but in order to understand the nature of the injustice and to help us think of possible ways to overcome it. Suggesting that enduring injustices fall outside the framework of liberal theory, Spinner-Halev spells out the implications of his arguments for conceptions of liberal justice and progress, reparations, apologies, state legitimacy, and post-nationalism.

Jeff Spinner-Halev is the Kenan Eminent Professor of Political Ethics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Boundaries of Citizenship: Race, Ethnicity and Nationality in the Liberal State (1994) and Surviving Diversity: Religion and Democratic Citizenship (2000) and co-editor of Minorities within Minorities: Equality, Right and Diversity (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

'With characteristic sensitivity and nuance, Spinner-Halev explores the ways in which deep injustices can persist even within avowedly liberal regimes. This is an important book by a committed liberal with a deep appreciation for the limitations of liberal solutions.' Joseph H. Carens, University of Toronto 'No country's past is free from the stain of injustice. But which past injustices merit attention today, and what kind of response is appropriate? Jeff Spinner-Halev tackles these questions from a fresh perspective, arguing that liberal political theory is ill equipped to handle them, and constructing a distinctive framework for thinking them through in a more helpful way. This is an insightful and provocative book by one of the country's most consistently interesting political theorists.' Alan Patten, Princeton University 'Enduring Injustice introduces a new and provocative framework for thinking about not only the nature of past injustices but also the way in which they can persist into the present and why we need to address them. But even more impressively, Spinner-Halev ties this discussion to broader issues in liberal political theory and challenges us to think about the nature of injustice more generally. This is an important topic and [a] terrific read.' Duncan Ivison, University of Sydney