Justice, Democracy, Legitimacy: Clarifying the Connections

The paper, co-authored with Zofia Stemplowska, explores the connection between three key concepts: justice, democracy and legitimacy. We query the distinctiveness of the view that justice should be understood in terms of relationships once one sees that advocates of alternative conceptions of justice can acknowledge the importance of legitimacy and the value of people standing in justificatory relationships to one another. What exactly is at stake in the distinction between justice and legitimacy? We then consider how democracy relates both to justice and legitimacy, focusing especially on the epistemic and justificatory-relational dimensions. Although primarily an attempt at conceptual clarification in an area characterized by considerable confusion, the paper has important implications for our understanding of justice and legitimacy in the real world, both within states and between them.