The Fair Balance

This book presents the means and the process by which fair balance solutions are shaped. Readers will find in it no re-commendations to policy makers on social arrangements to be established, or proposals for solutions to social conflicts. Normative theories of justice, such as egalitarianism, utilitarianism or contractarianism, will be addressed, but not for promoting the ideas of justice which are advocated by them. They will be treated as material to be analysed for a better understanding of justice. Justice in this book is regarded as an observable phenomenon consisting of the satisfaction provided to individuals involved in a social interaction when they are having regard to the treatment of the others? interests. This conviction can be effective when it actually occurs, or hypothetical, when the individual in a position to judge considers that the treatment received by the interests in interaction may be regarded as being the best possible. It is about justice conceived in this way that the author intends, in this book, to procure a study that is simultaneously descriptive and operational: descriptive in the sense of covering the whole phenomenon and built on accurate and verifiable knowledge; and operational, in the sense of establishing the laws that govern the phenomenon, thus providing a sound basis for predicting the circumstances that may generate it.