This seminar will discuss the role and effect (if any) social justice concerns should play when examining transactions in a free market economy. We primarily will examine the relationship of legal rules to the distribution of wealth in this country. The seminar will consider whether the traditional economic rationale for allowing markets to operate free of legal rules adequately responds to pre-existing distributional inequities. These inequities most often arise from the social construction of a number of identity variables, including race, gender, language, national origin, and, sexual orientation. Through readings that include materials taken from sociology, economics, and political theory, we also will consider arguments that identity variables work to create or preserve wealth distribution of economic inequalities. Throughout this semester, we will ask whether legal interventions are needed to correct actual or perceived injustices that exist in our market economy or whether the government should allow the market to correct any perceived or actual market inefficiencies.
Dickerson, Mechele