Spindle Law Interviews: Linda Radzik
January 18th, 2012 by Laura Bergus
Professor Linda Radzik is the author of Making Amends: Atonement Morality, Law, and Politics, published by Oxford University Press in 2009. She is an associate professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University and works on moral issues that arise in the aftermath of wrongdoing. Professor Radzik is currently writing about “moral bystanders,” and the roles third parties to moral conflicts play in enforcing and promulgating norms. She has also written about the ethics of forgiveness, criminal punishment and collective moral responsibility.
Professor Radzik obtained her PhD in philosophy from the University of Arizona in 1997.
Spindle Law: You are the first of those whom we’ve profiled who is not and has not practiced as a lawyer. As a legal philosopher, were you ever tempted to go to law school or become a lawyer?
Linda Radzik: Actually, I wasn’t ever tempted to go to law school. I was interested first in sociology, because of an interest in social justice, and then found philosophy. I didn’t want to be a lawyer because I couldn’t see myself in the courtroom—and I think that’s every student’s idea of what it is to be a lawyer. When I went to the University of Arizona, Joel Feinberg was just finishing his career there. It was where I began thinking of connections between morality and law. I believe the law is just one piece of the picture that we identify as morality, along with politics and aspects of everyday life.
SL: Your work focuses on moral issues that arise in the aftermath of wrongdoing. Can you describe the range of moral issues that you’ve studied?
LR: In my book on atonement, I wanted to cover the whole range of wrongdoing and responses to it: from making a rude comment to a friend all the way to murder, and systematic injustice in whole communities. It’s quite a broad range. In my next project, I will be focusing on everyday life, with less emphasis on law and politics.
SL: Have you looked at how attitudes towards these issues have changed over time?
LR: No, I tend to look at these questions in a normative way. So, I keep it in the first-person plural: “What should we think? What should we do?” One thing I’m interested in, and will be exploring in my new project, is a focus on what average people—as bystanders—can and should do. For instance, we have this way of looking at wrongdoing: if the act is illegal, then the state will take care of it. If it’s not illegal, then it’s none of my business. You can see what is wrong with this in the context of schoolyard bullying, where children engage in name-calling and social exclusion. The social science literature on bullying suggests that one effective way to address bullying is for bystanders and the whole school community to clearly communicate disapproval to the bully. For things that aren’t illegal but also aren’t merely personal, I’m interested in looking at the moral obligations of bystanders. For adult behavior, not just children.
SL: What are your thoughts on restorative justice, transitional justice, and other non-traditional forms of justice?
LR: I’ve studied many different theories of corrective justice. There are various moral ideals here: retributive punishment, deterrence, restitution, reconciliation, and reformation. In each of these, we get a different picture of what is important or valuable to society. Some theories focus more on punishment and don’t really address what the wrongdoer can or should do. I think the restorative justice movement, with its emphasis on reconciliation, includes a powerful moral idea. It gives wrongdoers the opportunity to be very active, in a kind of collaborative setting. In some practices, the wrongdoer and the victim negotiate how the wrong can be repaired.
However, in terms of this kind of process—restorative justice—being built into a society’s justice system, I question if this is the kind of thing that can be backed by the coercive power of the state. That is, I believe there are reasons to question whether states could require criminals or victims to engage in such processes. This may be inconsistent with what John Rawls called “liberal neutrality.” Liberal neutrality means that, in a liberal state, reasonable disagreement about what’s right and what’s good should be allowed. In such a state, people should be able to choose among different reasonable ways to address a wrong. Restorative justice is pressing a certain moral ideal. It is pushing for something close to personal forgiveness, which may not be agreeable or “good” in everyone’s view. That’s what makes me worry about the state enforcing this kind of system.
SL: How have legal academics responded to your work? And if they haven’t, do you wish they would?
LR: I haven’t yet seen my book reviewed in a law journal, for instance. But I appreciate that there is a connection between the legal community and the work that I’m doing. I am comfortable with that connection being indirect. What I sought to do was to write about the often intuitive moral conception of atonement. This is something few philosophers have directly addressed. My former colleague, Colleen Murphy, writes with perhaps a more direct connection to the legal world. She has done recent work on transitional justice and political reconciliation, with attention to international criminal law. I hope that people in the legal community and elsewhere will look to my book for ideas about what it means to right a wrong, which general ideas can certainly be tied back into the law as manifestations of such ideas.
SL: What advice do you have for law students or new lawyers, to bring some of these concepts into their practice and their thinking?
LR: My only advice—and this is what I tell my philosophy students who go on to law school—is to maintain curiosity about the fundamental values that underlie the law, including things like justice, respect and reasonable disagreement. Don’t lose sight of these in your study of the law.
Tags: atonement, Colleen Murphy, John Rawls, philosophy, Radzik, restorative justice, Texas A&M, transitional justice
