Karwan Osmani

My project concerns right-based arguments for markets.

Arguments from justice for market institutions have exerted great influence on law and politics in modernity (alongside utilitarian defenses of markets). Even the scope of permissible collective action has been substantially constrained by right-claims to external resources. Conversely, discussions of distributive justice have been molded by right-based arguments for contemporary economic institutions.

Right-based justifications of market arrangements have for these reasons (and others) wielded significant authority within modern discourse on justice. We cannot, then, really discuss justice and rights without also discussing markets. I will therefore analyze the structural affinities between right-based arguments for markets and liberal doctrines of right.