Students completing Theories of Social Justice will be introduced to an advanced
theoretical literature.  The course is designed to enable students to read this
literature in a critical and intelligent fashion and to employ this literature in
order to pursue their own empirical and formal research.  The course will focus on
the formal and substantive approaches employed to design, justify and implement
theories of distributive justice.  It will be taught through a mixture of lectures
and seminar discussion.  Students will be graded on the standard A to F grading scale
and will provide end-of-course evaluations on the instruction and course content
following established Department of Political Science evaluation procedures.

I. Introduction
Overview of major approaches to distributive justice
Overview of substantive research issues in distributive justice
Social justice and justification
How to conceptualize/formulate valid arguments relating to Social justice 

II. Substantive Issues
Central Issues: Freedom, Equality, Impartiality 
The status of the market: optimizing approaches and justice 
General Issues in Justification: political justification in 
a pluralist society; the problem of political stability;
balancing concerns regarding arbitrariness and responsibility;
structuring judgments among competing claims   

III. Designing Research Questions
The status of the community’s ethical consensus
The problem of competing moral concerns
The problem of ethical skepticism
Conflicts between liberty and equality
The problem of competing rights
Conflicts between fairness and liberty

All academic work must meet the standards contained in "A Culture of Honesty."  
Students are responsible for informing themselves about these standards before 
performing academic work.  The penalties for academic dishonesty are severe and 
ignorance is not an acceptable defense.  Also note that the course syllabus is a 
general plan for the course and that deviations announced to the class by the 
instructor may be necessary.  (www.uga.edu/ovpi/academic_honesty/academic_honesty.htm)