Chwaszcza, Christine --- "A Rejoinder" [2011] ELECD 670; in Micklitz, Hans-W. (ed), "The Many Concepts of Social Justice in European Private Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: The Many Concepts of Social Justice in European Private Law

Editor(s): Micklitz, Hans-W.

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802604

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: A Rejoinder

Author(s): Chwaszcza, Christine

Number of pages: 8

Extract:

5. A rejoinder
Christine Chwaszcza
I am very grateful to Professor Sadurski, whose generous comments give me
an occasion to clarify four points in my defense of the concept of commuta-
tive justice.
First, the point that I found most interesting in Chapter 2 was the fact that
Professor Sadurski indeed argued that the concept of commutative justice
either is to be reduced to the concept of distributive justice or is identical with
the principle that contracts and promises ought to be kept, which, according
to Professor Sadurski, is not a principle of justice at all. Before commenting
on his reply, I would like to emphasize that the point that caught my interest
was that Professor Sadurski made an argument for his claims, whereas most
other legal and political theorists simply seem to assume that the concept of
commutative justice is useless ­ if not nonsense ­ without even making an
attempt to clarify what they mean when they refer to the concept or why they
think that it had better be debunked. Being invited as a philosopher to
contribute to a conference on European private law, which certainly is a rather
technical subject, I was stunned by the frequency with which the concept of
social justice is mentioned in articles and documents and by the absence of
the concept of commutative justice in the debate. As Professor Jules Coleman
put it during the conference, `Nobody talks about commutative justice
anymore.' If there is something that the philosopher can and may contribute
...