Orthodox Private Law and Social Subordination

Abstract

In Reciprocal Freedom, Weinrib offers a neat and powerful explanation of the relationship between private law, corrective justice, public law, and distributive justice. In the Kantian view, private law and corrective justice are conceptually prior to public law and distributive justice. The primary function of public law is to publicly determine and enforce private rights. Institutions of distributive justice are required to legitimize a system of private rights that creates the possibility of subordination. In this comment, I argue that Reciprocal Freedom is a justification for what I will call ‘orthodox private law’ that, because it neglects the place of distributive justice within private law, fails to secure genuine independence for all persons

With the support of Research Project PID2023-152057NB-I00, Ministry of Science and Innovation (Spain). Open Access funding provided thanks to the CSUC agreement with Cambridge University Press (CUP)

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