Social Justice and Administrative Practice : Rethinking Expertise and Democratic Procedure in Environmental Policy
How should principles of social justice be brought to bear on the environmental policies that administrative agencies implement? This paper argues that existing laws and executive orders justify a role for evaluating agency decisions in terms of social justice, and that this kind of policy evaluation should be used to alter or block polices when they conflict with what social justice requires. I make this argument by first identifying the legal rules that authorize (a) deference to the principle of economic efficiency in evaluation of agency promulgated rules and programs, and (b) use of democratic decision-making procedures to design rules and programs necessary for implementing environmental policies. I then review existing sources of law that similarly can be understood to authorize applying principles of social justice to evaluate and design these same rules and programs. Given this legal justification for why principles of social justice should formally influence agency decisions about environmental policies, the paper then argues that the formal application of these principles can productively navigate the tension in current policy between technocratic expertise and democratic procedure. In particular, I argue that a justice-based approach to policy evaluation and design can narrow the terrain of technocratic expertise, and that it can protect the environmental conditions necessary for making democratic processes procedurally just
Year of publication: |
2014
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Authors: | Holland, Breena |
Publisher: |
[2014]: [S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Umweltpolitik | Environmental policy | Soziale Gerechtigkeit | Social justice | Demokratie | Democracy |
Description of contents: | Abstract [papers.ssrn.com] |
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