Christian Schemmel’s Justice and Egalitarian Relations develops a liberal, relationally egalitarian theory of social justice. Schemmel hopes that the theory can ‘convince liberals that they should be relational egalitarians, and relational egalitarians that they should be liberals’ (3). Critical of egalitarians who construe justice in terms of equal distributions of some goods such as resources, welfare or opportunities, relational egalitarians generally argue that the kind of equality that matters fundamentally for justice is the relational kind summed up by Schemmel’s ideal of ‘achieving a society of equals’ (3). For example, in Elizabeth Anderson’s canonical defence of relational egalitarianism, she construes the equality that justice favours ‘as a kind of social relation between persons – an equality of authority, status, or standing’, rather than ‘as an equal distribution of non-relational goods among individuals (Anderson Reference Anderson2010, 1; see also Anderson Reference Anderson1999). At the heart of Schemmel’s liberal relational egalitarianism lies a liberal conception of non-domination as the most important relational demand of social justice, but not the only such demand. The first part of his book develops this account; the second part applies it in the crucial domains of political, economic and health-care justice. The book is stunning. It is argument-rich and argument-dense, but meticulously crafted to layer arguments with illuminating examples that support and illustrate the argumentative threads. It is no light read; it requires real work to fully take in its arguments. But it is work well-invested. The arguments are dense and complex not for complexity’s sake but because the work Schemmel sets out to accomplish is hard work. He develops and applies relational egalitarianism with a needed care and attention to detail. No philosopher interested in egalitarian justice should skip this book. In what follows, I first summarize Schemmel’s arguments. I then sound some notes of tempered disagreement with the conclusions he reaches.

In part I (Chapters 1–6), Schemmel works out the core components and requirements of liberal relational egalitarianism. After an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 develops an expressive account of justice according to which the treatment of individuals and groups by social and political institutions is irreducibly important to justice. That treatment’s expressive content is particularly salient for justice when the treatment causes or reinforces power and status hierarchies. In contrast to his liberal relational egalitarianism, Schemmel argues, distribution-focused theories of justice cannot adequately account for the importance of this expressive content. Chapter 3 situates this expressive account within a liberal framework that construes justice as the fair terms of cooperation between individuals understood as free and equal citizens. It derives a liberal conception of non-domination as a demand of respect for citizens so understood. On Schemmel’s construal, domination is an asymmetrical capacity of one agent to arbitrarily interfere in the choices of another; and interference is arbitrary when it is not constrained to respect prima facie social claims of the interfered-with party. Non-domination is not the only concern of social justice on Schemmel’s account, but it enjoys priority over others. Chapter 4 explores the requirements of liberal non-domination. These include institutional arrangements and policies to combat domination – with variably intensive protections against domination depending on the domain of choice in question – and a social ethos of non-domination. On Schemmel’s picture, legal protections against domination must allow scope for agential choice, and social norms must operate within the space of agential discretion to support a general inclination to exercise self-restraint and concern for others’ claims when we exercise power over them.

Chapters 5 and 6 explore considerations of liberal relational egalitarianism that extend beyond non-domination. Chapter 5 considers two rival accounts that seek to explain the importance of relational equality: first, a social egalitarianism on which the value of social equality is distinct from and can conflict with social justice; second, relation-sensitive distributive egalitarianism which encompasses social egalitarian goods. Schemmel finds both alternatives wanting, but his assessment also shows that liberal relational egalitarianism must demand more than non-domination: It must explain the wrongness of inegalitarian status norms and the hazards inegalitarian relations can pose to self-respect. Chapter 6 then supplies an account of egalitarian status norms and analyses the kinds of injustice that inegalitarian status norms can cause or constitute: They can enable or exacerbate domination; they can harm self-respect; and they can deprive individuals of important social opportunities, which threatens equal standing when the deprival owes to inegalitarian-norm-coordinated behaviour. This argument brings social norms into the purview of liberal (egalitarian) concern and establishes that Schemmel’s liberal relational egalitarianism can constitute an adequate account of the various social and political concerns that animate relational egalitarians, not only those that are reducible to problems of domination.

In part II (Chapters 7–9), Schemmel develops the implications of liberal relational egalitarianism in three crucial domains of social justice: political liberties, distributive justice, and justice in health and health-care. The goal of these chapters is to show that liberal relational egalitarianism yields plausible and robustly egalitarian guidance in these domains. Chapter 7 argues that liberal relational equality requires demandingly equal rights to political participation in the spirit of Rawls’s fair value of the political liberties, which Schemmel understands as a fair equality of opportunity to participate effectively in politics. This requirement, which is imposed on grounds of non-domination and equal respect for each citizen’s capacity for a sense of justice, enjoys a qualified priority over other demands of liberal relational egalitarianism, reliant on the conduciveness of political equality to substantive justice.

Chapter 8 considers the distribution of social goods. Schemmel argues that liberal relational egalitarianism imposes stringent limits on inequalities of income, wealth and opportunities, both because such inequalities can underpin domination and inegalitarian status norms, and because inequalities that lack a justification by reference to justice-relevant considerations can constitute expressive injustices when they violate a presumption of distributive equality called for on grounds of respect for each citizen’s equal social standing. Chapter 9 completes Schemmel’s case for liberal relational egalitarianism by showing that it has demandingly egalitarian implications for justice in health and health-care and provides a plausible ordering of the injustice of different types of health inequalities. This case for a robustly egalitarian distribution of health and health-care is meant to disarm the worry that liberal relational egalitarianism focuses on fairness in the distribution of goods produced by social cooperation to the exclusion of a fair distribution of goods that have a significant natural dimension.

Schemmel writes that ‘the key contention of [the] book is not only that liberalism gives rise to demanding requirements of relational equality, but that these requirements ought to enjoy special stringency’ (288). I agree enthusiastically on both counts, and I found Schemmel’s defence and development of this contention illuminating and congenial. But this key contention does not exhaust the major claims the book advances. Also important is the case against an alternative, distributive approach to justice. On that front, I’m less convinced. I think that relational and distributive equality both matter, but that relational equality matters more, for principled reasons. This is why I find Schemmel’s ‘key contention’ so congenial: Liberalism does indeed impose relationally egalitarian demands; those demands have stringently egalitarian distributive implications; and liberalism’s relational egalitarian demands are especially morally weighty. But on my view, the relational egalitarian demands of justice are especially morally weighty relative to the distributive concerns of justice. The latter encompass our justice reasons to pursue distributive equality which do not reduce to reasons of relational equality.

Schemmel needn’t refute this pluralistic view in order to vindicate his self-described key contention. But he does argue against it, responding to G.A. Cohen as an exemplar of the kind of pluralism I endorse. In response to the idea that justice has irreducibly distributive and irreducibly relational dimensions, Schemmel argues that ‘the likely upshot of a view that regards distributive and non-distributive justice as two separate subjects of investigation is that the two dimensions have to be balanced case by case, without any further general theoretical guidelines as to how to undertake this balancing’ (30). And he argues that the alternative he offers, of an integrated fully relational view that purports to subsume justice-salient distributive considerations into the demands of relational equality, has an advantage: ‘By accounting for these two dimensions of justice and their interplay in one unified set of principles’, he claims, his monist relational egalitarianism has ‘a better claim to practical pre-eminence over other considerations – and therefore of also fitting better with the widespread conviction that justice, as a political value, enjoys a special stringency not shared by other values’ (31).

Schemmel is certainly right that Cohen resists providing any general theoretical guidance on how to weight considerations of distributive and relational equality. But why should we regard such guidance as beyond the reach of a pluralist account to provide? After all, mutually irreducible considerations of justice might be comparable even if they are not commensurable (Chang Reference Chang1997). And why should we think justice needs to be a unitary consideration in order for it to take priority over other, non-justice considerations? After all, justice might issue surpassingly stringent reasons whether it is internally pluralist or internally monist. Schemmel makes a powerful case against distributive egalitarianism understood as the view that irreducibly distributive considerations exhaust the considerations of justice (47). But this case does nothing to undermine an egalitarian pluralism about justice, which holds that distributions are among the things that matter irreducibly for justice. Nor does Schemmel’s case against relationship-sensitive distributive egalitarianism undermine egalitarian pluralism about justice (144–161). Schemmel joins a tradition of relational egalitarians who argue against distributive egalitarianism construed as the view that distributive equality exhausts the considerations of justice. My view – and the view I think many other distributive egalitarians are most plausibly read as endorsing – is the view that distributions and relations both matter, and each irreducibly so.

Schemmel spends more time addressing and rejecting a different kind of pluralism: Pluralist social egalitarianism (PSE) is the view that ‘(a) there is at least one important social egalitarian rationale that social justice cannot account for, and which therefore calls for reliance on a value of social equality distinct from justice, and (b) that the requirements of social equality have to be balanced with those of other values – including justice, should they conflict – at the level of principle’ (133). This is not pluralism about justice – it does not hold that justice comprises both relational and distributive considerations – but rather pluralism about the value of relational equality: Some relational egalitarian concerns matter because they are concerns of justice while others matter independently of justice. Schemmel’s case against PSE begins by observing that it would be unfortunate if it were true: ‘The more social egalitarian rationales we can bring under liberal justice, the better – because it opens up such a wider mandate for collectively shaping the right kind of social norms’ (143). He then argues that PSE is theoretically unmotivated and implausibly over-inclusive. Because liberal relational egalitarianism can account for a broad range of intuitively salient social inequalities as unjust, we needn’t posit relational egalitarian concerns that lie beyond justice. And because PSE has trouble distinguishing norm-mediated practices of exclusion from mere individual moral failures, it risks over-inclusive condemnation. This case against PSE seems powerful, but it is no case against pluralism about the kinds of equality that matter for justice.

If egalitarian pluralism about justice of the form I endorse remains a viable contending account of justice, its viability is relevant to an assessment of some further arguments Schemmel offers. For example, regarding distributive justice, Schemmel argues that relational egalitarians should endorse a defeasible presumption of distributive equality ‘because such a presumption expresses equal respect for participants in cooperation who jointly produce basic social goods’ (236). I agree. Now, if relational egalitarianism favours a defeasible baseline of distributive equality, we might think that alone accommodates the intuitive case for distributive equality. But, as Schemmel points out, the extent of distributive equality that relational egalitarianism requires on these expressive grounds remains an open question, in part because it remains an open question what constitutes a justice-salient consideration that can overturn the presumption of equality. Relational egalitarianism also furnishes instrumental considerations that can impugn distributive inequality: Inequality might give rise to domination or pose a threat to individuals’ equal social status (242). But the combined expressive and instrumental case for distributive equality that Schemmel’s view yields may still be consistent with considerable distributive inequality, especially since the instrumental ills of inequality can sometimes be averted without removing the inequality (242). So, what can overturn the principled presumption of inequality imposed by the expressive case? And when should we prefer distributive remedies to domination and status inequality? On these matters, Schemmel says, ‘there is ample space for reasonable disagreement’, which ‘should be resolved in egalitarian democratic procedures’ (241, 250). This seems plausible. But I would argue that distributive egalitarian considerations should guide voters in reaching a resolution. In other words: This may indeed be a space for democratic decision-making; yet it is also a space within which, possibly, citizens can legitimately arrive at an unjust outcome through democratic decision-making, by failing to give adequate uptake to considerations of distributive justice. We can say this plausible thing about the considerations in play only if we are pluralists about justice.

Now, the general conceptual possibility – the possibility of citizens legitimately arriving at a substantively unjust verdict through democratic decision-making – is one Schemmel is rightly concerned to preserve. To do so, he affords political equality priority over other requirements of social justice. His first case for the priority of political equality rests on the claim that ‘egalitarian political procedures express equal and full respect for people’s first moral power: their sense of justice’ (208). Importantly, the priority this case secures is a qualified one: Democratic decision-making procedures that preserve equal political liberties ‘can only lay claim to instantiating proper respect for people’s sense of justice if following them in fact reliably leads to the identification, and implementation, of just outcomes’ (210). His second argument rests on non-domination: We need ‘demandingly egalitarian political rights to determine outcomes where claims of justice are reasonably contestable’, because ‘giving some greater power to determine the adjudication of such contested claims would be arbitrary’ (212).

These two arguments for political equality leave open the important possibility I made use of above: Perhaps the requirements of irreducibly distributive egalitarian justice are reasonably contestable. If so, then Schemmel’s non-domination case entails that they would be legitimately left to democratic decision-making. Egalitarian pluralists can then say that citizens should vote to comply with such requirements, even though the social arrangement remains legitimate if they do not. Schemmel does not note this particular possibility, because he is not an egalitarian pluralist about justice. But he does linger on an inverse possibility for divergence between justice and democracy: With respect to substantive requirements of social justice that are not reasonably contestable, equal political opportunities may be restricted – for example, through a constitutional court with substantive powers of judicial review – if the mechanisms for restricting equal political opportunities don’t themselves introduce domination (213). Crucially, though, when Schemmel asks to what degree such restriction is likely to be justified, he answers that we will rarely be justified restricting political liberties through such mechanisms, because we will rarely meet an exacting epistemic requirement for justifiably doing so:

This criterion strikes me as implausibly demanding, and implausibly demanding by the lights of Schemmel’s own theory. He writes that ‘this high threshold of evidence is required by the expressive rationale of respect’ (219). But recall that the epistemic criterion operates within an already restricted space of cases: It adjudicated the overridingness of political equality when non-contestable requirements of justice are at stake. These non-contestable requirements are the substantive requirements imposed by our liberal conception of citizens as free and equal (213): requirements such as protections for our equal basic non-political liberties. Why should the expressive rationale of respect favour preserving equal political liberties – by avoiding the implementation of a constitutional court, for example – even at a predictably-but-not-assuredly high cost to equal non-political liberties such as freedom of the person or equal protection under the law? Now, Schemmel’s epistemic criterion avoids this implication if the tradeoff is persistent and empirically verifiable to a very high evidentiary standard. But given the barriers to attaining such empirical verification (220, 224), this amounts to a quite strong subordination of non-political to political liberties under the effectively ubiquitous circumstances of imperfect predictive knowledge about the consequences of implementing vs. not implementing such practices as judicial review. This subordination seems too strong, and it is unclear why Schemmel is pushed by his argument to embrace it. He wrote, recall, that democratic decision-making processes ‘can only lay claim to instantiating proper respect for people’s sense of justice if following them in fact reliably leads to the identification, and implementation, of just outcomes – to fair adjudications of conflicting claims’ (210). Why, then, should full respect for citizens’ moral powers, taken on the whole, require managing uncertainty by so strongly favouring political over substantive equality?

Justice and Egalitarian Relations is highly compelling and greatly enjoyable. As I hope these reflections suggest, it brings to long-standing disputes among egalitarians a greater degree of clarity and the potential for welcome progress. I recommend this book enthusiastically.