<p>Fair compromise is often taken to involve reciprocity and proportionality in concession-making. This paper examines challenges posed to this ideal by value pluralism: the proposition that there are multiple, irreducible basic goods. Value pluralism entails that parties to a potential compromise will sometimes act on the basis of non-shared interests not fully amenable to reciprocal determinations of proportionality. Specifically, certain judgments of value pose problems of epistemic inaccessibility and/or value incommensurability. I show that these problems arise with special visibility in conflicts involving law and religion, and suggest that in such cases the best that can be hoped for is a “blind compromise” in which the magnitude of the other party’s concessions remain uncertain. However, I suggest an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s Religion Clauses as framing a meta-compromise that brackets these problems and enshrines reciprocal concessions between law and religion as dual sources of authority.</p>

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Value Pluralism and Blind Compromise: Obstacles to Reciprocity in Religion and Law

  • David Golemboski

摘要

Fair compromise is often taken to involve reciprocity and proportionality in concession-making. This paper examines challenges posed to this ideal by value pluralism: the proposition that there are multiple, irreducible basic goods. Value pluralism entails that parties to a potential compromise will sometimes act on the basis of non-shared interests not fully amenable to reciprocal determinations of proportionality. Specifically, certain judgments of value pose problems of epistemic inaccessibility and/or value incommensurability. I show that these problems arise with special visibility in conflicts involving law and religion, and suggest that in such cases the best that can be hoped for is a “blind compromise” in which the magnitude of the other party’s concessions remain uncertain. However, I suggest an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution’s Religion Clauses as framing a meta-compromise that brackets these problems and enshrines reciprocal concessions between law and religion as dual sources of authority.