Understanding Legitimacy by Shadd Philip D.;

Author:Shadd, Philip D.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Tenet 8: The purpose of the state is public justice.

What, then, is the state’s purpose?

It is to do what Dooyeweerd calls “public justice.” “The state,” as Chaplin explains Dooyeweerd’s idea, “is charged with establishing, through law, a just balance among numerous legitimate claims thrown up by complex, dynamic modern societies.”[132] The state must follow the norm of public justice given its distinctive character as a “juridically qualified, impartial, public-interest” institution.[133] This idea and term have been widely adopted by subsequent neo-Calvinists. God has ordained the state “with a unique task in his world: to do justice to the diversity of individuals and communities in his world.”[134] This task, public justice, is “intrinsic to [the state’s] makeup.”[135]

The mere term “public justice” doesn’t say much. What is unique about public justice as a conception of justice, distinct from others?

On this conception, the state’s task is essentially one of balancing, of balancing the potentially conflicting demands of different social actors. Public justice is a matter of “adjudicating the respective claims of the various, multiple spheres of society,” such that society develops “in a balanced, proportionate fashion.”[136] Koyzis describes a “healthy society” as one “in which the various spheres of human activity develop in balanced, proportionate fashion.”[137] Accordingly, where the state fails to do public justice, “societies tend to develop in lopsided ways, with one or more of these spheres claiming more than they have a right to.”[138] To do public justice, then, is to uphold sphere sovereignty, to ensure that no sphere outweighs others in the sense of trespassing into others’ rightful domains.

The social actors whose interests and claims need be weighed, and whose sovereign spheres need protection, include both institutions and individuals. This, too, helps distinguish public justice as a conception of justice. We in the individualistic West are keenly aware of the threat institutions can pose to individuals, but the natural rights of institutions must also be protected from excessive individualism. Koyzis writes:

Under the influence of various forms of liberalism, the individual may assume too large a place at the expense of other spheres. Communities, including such basic ones as marriage and family, increasingly break down as they are deemed to serve no longer the wants of the aggregating individuals they comprise. The rights of individuals come to take priority over the rights of communities, even of institutional churches making unpopular lifestyle demands on their communicants as a condition for continued membership.[139]

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