Broome's Theory of Fairness and the Problem of Quantifying the Strengths of Claims

Abstract

John Broome argues that fairness requires that claims are satisfied in proportion to their strength. Broome holds that, when distributing indivisible goods, fairness requires the use of weighted lotteries as a surrogate to satisfy proportionally each candidate's claims. In this article, we present two arguments against Broome's account of fairness. First, we argue that it is almost impossible to calculate the weights of the lotteries in accordance with the requirements of fairness. Second, we argue that Broome rules out those methods whose use might provide some resolution to this problem. From these arguments, we conclude that, contra Broome, fairness does not require the proportional satisfaction of claims.

Dividing the indivisible

“…Hooker is far from alone in his judgment that in cases like Medicine, fairness requires that the good goes to the agent with the strongest claim. Other commentators on Broome’s theory, such as Lazenby (2014), Kirkpatrick and Eastwood (2015), and Piller (2017) all agree with Hooker on this point. 7 These shared intuitions concerning cases like Medicine make it worthwhile to develop a theory of fairness according to which, indeed, it is completely fair to let the stronger claim win.…”

“… 1. Tomlin (2012) and Kirkpatrick & Eastwood (2015) argue against the core feature of Broome’s account, that is, against the characterization of fairness as the proportional satisfaction of claims. Hooker (2005) and Saunders (2010) argue that fairness is not a strictly comparative value. …”

“… 2. Kirkpatrick & Eastwood (2015), Lazenby (2014), Henning (2015), Hooker (2005), Saunders (2010), and Vong (2015) all argue, in one way or another, that Broome misconceives the relation between fairness and weighted lotteries. …”

How to be fairer

“…All this does help Curtis only to some extent: even when adopting a Broomean definition of a claim, we would still need an explicit argument for why P would follow from FC as the only fair division rule. Broome's (1990) account of fairness has been criticized on various grounds that are connected to his notion of a claim being overly idealized and restrictive (Hooker 2005;Tomlin 2012;Kirkpatrick and Eastwood 2015). For instance, Hooker (2005) argues that, pace Broome, fairness is not insensitive to side-constraints.…”

“…We also find that several of the 'Broomean' assumptions that Curtis makes, which have so far been the focal point of the recent philosophical literature on fairness, are equally implausible. In particular, Broome's restricted notion of what a 'claim' in a fair division problem is, already criticized by Hooker (2005), Tomlin (2012), and Kirkpatrick and Eastwood (2015), renders his theory of fairness inapplicable in many important contexts. The economic literature, by contrast, offers a range of tools in which such assumptions can be dropped, and thus offers a fruitful environment for the study of fairness.…”