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Incommensurability And Valuation In Law, Cass R. Sunstein

Michigan Law Review

In this article I explore two claims and discuss their implications for law. The first claim is that human values are plural and diverse. By this I mean that we value things, events, and relationships in ways that are not reducible to some larger and more encompassing value. The second claim is that human goods are not commensurable. By this I mean that such goods are not assessed along a single metric. For reasons to be explored, the two claims, though related, are importantly different.