Equality, Justice and Legitimacy in Selection

Abstract

The claim that the ideal of equality has a role to play in the critique of discrimination in employment and education has been rejected by a number of philosophers. Certain anti-egalitarians argue that the appeal to equality is redundant; others that egalitarianism misdirects us or fails to explain our special hostility towards discrimination. This article sketches an egalitarian conception of justice in selection and explains what is distinctive about such conceptions. Thereafter, it attempts to rebut the important objections that have been raised against egalitarian accounts of discrimination.