The Circumstances of Justice

A new account of the Circumstances of Justice, the background conditions that are necessary and sufficient for justice to exist between the parties of a society, is developed in terms of convention. A standard account of the Circumstances of Justice widely attributed to Hume is criticized, partly on the grounds that Hobbes’ State of Nature and the Prisoner’s Dilemma are situations where the standard account conditions obtain and justice is impossible. These criticisms help to motivate the new game-theoretic account. Parties are in Generic Circumstances of Justice when (i) their underlying game has multiple optimal conventions they can achieve by all acting so as to contribute to a cooperative surplus, and (ii) each contributing party risks being let down if this party contributes and the others fail to contribute. These Generic Circumstances reflect Hume’s original account better than the standard account attributed to Hume.