Philosophy Commons^™

Spectacle, Consumer Capitalism, And The Hyperreality Of The Mediated American Jury Trial: The French Perspective On O.J. Simpson, Casey Anthony, And Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Bailey Miller Wamp

Masters Theses

This study investigates modern French criticism of jury trial mediation in the United States. By engaging the work of twentieth-century French theorists Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, and Pierre Bourdieu, as well as French journalistic reporting on the jury trials of O.J. Simpson, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and Casey Anthony, this study argues that mediated images of the American jury trial abandon the pursuit of justice in favor of a consumer capitalist endeavor to create spectacle. Ultimately, jury trial mediation generates a hyperreality in which the media simulates the pursuit of justice with no reference to the “real” pursuit of justice.

In order …

Flannery O'Connor And The Mystery Of Justice, Matthew Holland Bryant Cheney

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study will be to begin to answer the question, “What is ‘justice’ in the work of Flannery O’Connor?” by approaching three stories—“The Comforts of Home,” “The Partridge Festival,” and finally “Everything that Rises Must Converge.” Each of these stories applies pressure to both individual and social conceptions of justice while fixating primarily on individuals’ just or unjust convictions and principles, usually in tension with those of their family or community. Flannery O’Connor’s work, while it seriously questions the possibility of “perfect” justice among a fallen humanity, exemplifies the paradoxes that arise from the contingency of our …

Justice, Health, And Normal Function: A Political Foundation For Just Health Distribution, Erik Randall Krag

Doctoral Dissertations

Health is a particularly important social good, not least because it protects equality of opportunity: whatever goals we have, we need health to pursue them. Justice requires that we protect equality of opportunity, and so a just society must protect the health of its citizens. However, health resources are scarce; hence, theories of justice must consider how to distribute them fairly. Such distributional schemes must meet two requirements: first, they must fix what counts as a health need, and second, they must determine how to prioritize health needs. Existing discussions often focus on the second requirement alone, but this risks …