Of course none of Amartya’s own public statements mention anything about social justice. But I will wait to read the book.

Really now? And who is supposed to be running the country, foreigners? Justice is delivered by the people for the people, not by some group of aliens living in India. Go join law school and become a lawyer and fight the powers that be instead of being a left-wing public nuisance like Amartya Sen.

- You start off with a tirade against because a person is discussing a topic his is not supposedly an expert on. If I am not mistaken but did/don’t you not write on economics and foreign policy and politics. In any case, this is moot because expertise is not what your background is but what rigor one brings to the topic at hand and to what extent one trains/gets educated before commenting. What is not important is the background (though it definitely helps) but what you say and bring to the table. Thus, judging Dr Sen on his background is ill placed. Plus, a lot of his work has touched upon social justice issues and I think some work related to individual justice too. In any case, the point should be obvious.

- Secondly, it is important to read the work before you criticize even you though justify it as criticizing what he is saying. Context matters and the depth of his work would not come across in an interview. If it did, then writing of the book would be futile, no? As for whether justice should be in the narrowly defined way as you claim or as Dr Sen equates social and individual justice, we’ll let the man make his case, and you should make yours after doing your bit and reading what he has to say.

Lastly, some of the comments in support of this post seem quite juvenile – leftist, stooge,etc. Seriously guys, you don’t have much to say, do you?

First is when we talk ‘Rights’ then we have to first answer that who is defining rights for Whom and on what basis? Simple answer is that it is Society which defining what is Rights or Violations or what stands for even word Justice… Because if left upto me then I’ll say Humans have been violating right of freedom of very ground under us. Whether it have consciousness or not is other question…

Second issue that ‘Justice is Relative’ appears to me to be correct stand. Because for e.g. if for similar crime I impose heavy fine on poor man same as rich man then it is not actually justice. What I have done is following of rule book without paying attention to conscience of society. This punishment may be hard on poor man and very light on rich man.

Finally we have to remember that when a Man fails it is not his failure but Society’s he stays in…

Whatever happened to the words “global warming” is it no longer useful in ginning up enough anxiety/outrage ?

The successful effort to desegregate the American South did not come about owing to Barry Goldwater’s libertarian ideas of individual rights and freedom (not just states rights which was also part of his plank)

Goldwater directly addresses the question of Civil Rights legislation in his seminal work “Consciencse of a Conservative” – his position was principled and one that put more faith on the American people than the American Government.

Also the Southern States are a convenient pinyata to beat up on when it comes to issues such as segregation etc. I lived in the most segregated city in America for three years – it happens to be Chicago and not any town in the south.

If anything segregation is now carried out on mutually acceptable terms – any one who has even a passing familiarity with the housing “projects” that the Government tried to come up with in Chicago to help find housing for low income Americans, or similar projects elsewhere in the country knows how segregated America is today.

The white population practically fled to the suburbs beginning in the 70’s ( yes thats right, after the forceful way The Federal Govt tried to implement schemes likes “bussing”)

Segregation is alive and well in America – it only happens now in mutually acceptable terms. Every one in Chicago knows who the NorthSiders are (hint 95% white) and who the SouthSiders are (hint non white)

Heck, they dont even have common places of worship after all the desegregation that happened – Whites dont go to Black Churches and blacks sure as hell dont go to White churches. How could they? They all live in neighborhoods that are distinctly composed of one community only – there are very very few mixed neighborhoods.

it came about through change thrust forcibly on the offending states by the US federal government through the Civil Rights Act and various judgments of the US Supreme Court.

“Offending” states ?? Gee, no wonder you seem to prefer Sunstein over Epstein.

No amount of laws will change how people feel about each other – and the silent but mutually agreed upon code of segregation of several cities in America is an open testimony of this.

You have no idea of how the Federal Government tries to promote mixed race neighborhoods – some of the advertising they do is downright racist.

Without prejudice to what Amartya Sen thinks of justice, looking at your parsimonious definition:

The simplest definition of justice is the redressal of a violation of rights.

The problem, then, reduces to identifying what these rights are, and how the ‘redressal’ is done.

IMO it is this normative nature of the problem that leads to a difference in opinion. For example, leftist ideologues (notably communists) frequently demand a ‘right to work’ or the ‘right to food’ to be part of law, which many of us may not agree to.

In other words, answering the question ‘what is justice?’ fully requires an ideology, which, by definition, is not objective.