Thread by @scott_m_coley

RT-ing b/c it's easier to lay out my answer.

If I’m understanding you correctly, you’ve got two questions here:

(1) How could there be a collective responsibility to compensate for past injustice if there’s no collective guilt?

https://twitter.com/NeilShenvi/status/1141140891182292992

(2) Is there an answer the first question that doesn’t violate Scripture’s prohibition on partiality in the administration of justice.

Have I got that right? If I’m leaving something out, just let me know.

Here’s my reaction to your first question: Excellent question. I’ll start with the best answer that I can think of and then I’ll tell you why I think Christians in particular should embrace it—especially white Christians living in the present day United States.

Imagine a society with a history of discriminatory laws that have disproportionately harmed a particular group of people. Call the group that has suffered these harms ‘Group A’.

Now suppose that there’s some other group, ‘Group B’, that has disproportionately benefitted from the very same laws that have harmed the members of Group A.

Purely for the sake of simplicity—and I cannot emphasize this enough: **purely** for the sake of simplicity—let’s imagine that, as of 2019, all the bad laws have been changed and no living member of Group B is morally culpable for the harms suffered by the members of Group A.

Still, some members of Group A continue to be harmed by the history of bad laws, in the sense that they are worse off than they would be had those laws never existed.

And some members of Group B continue to benefit, in the sense that they’re better off than they would be had those laws never existed.

Thus, some members of Group B owe compensation to some members of Group A—even though, as we’ve stipulated, no living member of Group B is morally culpable for the harm suffered by members of Group A.

(This is just like the case in which @martyduren ’s descendants owe your descendants $15K, even though they share none of Marty’s guilt in the original theft. You with me?)

Here’s the difficult bit. Figuring out which members of Group B owe compensation to members of Group A, and how much, would require answers to all sorts of impossibly difficult counterfactuals Re: how much better or worse off individuals would be had the bad laws never existed.

So we’ve got folks who are owed compensation, and it’s impossible to figure out how much compensation they’re owed and who owes it.

My answer: insurance. Think about your car insurance: you pay $100 a month. In exchange, you’ll get your car fixed if you get in a wreck. Why do you get insurance? Because you’re averse to the risk of getting in a car accident and being unable to pay for the damage out of pocket.

Now, you know that part of your insurance is going to pay for victims of hit-and-runs: situations where a person’s car is hit and the culprit flees. In other words, situations in which someone is owed compensation and it’s not clear who owes the compensation.

And why do you agree to this? Because the alternative is unthinkable: risking being in a situation where your car is wrecked and you can’t afford to fix it.

As a Christian, I find it unthinkable that I should benefit from manifestly unjust laws that existed in the past and continue to harm people in the present day. Not because I share guilt in the existence of those laws, but because I don’t want to benefit from that sort of harm.

So I want insurance against this result. I want to pay premiums into a pool of money that dispenses benefits to those who are worse off than they would be had those bad laws never existed. Because the alternative is unthinkable.

*answer to the first question

Now, regarding your second question: Scripture's condemnation of partiality has to do with the kind of justice dispensed in courts. Judges (or whomever) shouldn’t say, “The defendant is clearly guilty/liable; but I’m going to let her off because she’s poor.”

That deals with the administration or application of the law, which is totally different from questions about what the law should be, or what an overall system of laws ought to look like.

Scripture clearly favors *systems of law* that show partiality toward the poor, e.g., in the levying of taxes. That’s why the prophets rail against, e.g., extracting a tax of grain from the poor (Amos 5:11). Not extracting a tax of grain as such—just from the poor.

This is just one example of Scripture’s condemnation of laws or legal systems that fail to appropriately protect the interests of the poor. There are dozens more. In short, laws and legal systems *should* be partial to the needs of the poor and dispossessed.

But the administration/application of the law (as in court) should absolutely be impartial. Does that make sense?