Wendy Salkin, “Democracy Within, Justice Without: The Duties of Informal Political Representatives,” Noûs (2021), https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12391
Wendy Salkin, “The Conscription of Informal Political Representatives,” Journal of Political Philosophy 29, no. 4: 429-455 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12246
Wendy Salkin, "Judicial Representation: Speaking for Others from the Bench," in Disability, Health, Law, and Bioethics, edited by I. Glenn Cohen, Carmel Shachar, Anita Silvers, and Michael Ashley Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 211-220, doi: 10.1017/9781108622851.023
Papers in Progress
"Bench Representation"
“Speaking For, Speaking About, Speaking With, Speaking Out” (for upcoming Politics, Philosophy & Economics workshop)
“You Say I Want a Revolution” (for upcoming special issue of The Monist on Du Bois and democracy)
- Abstract: Informal political representation can be a political lifeline, particularly for oppressed and marginalized groups. Such representation can give these groups some say, however mediate, partial, and imperfect, in how things go for them. Coeval with the political goods such representation offers these groups are its particular dangers for them. Mindful of these dangers, skeptics challenge the practice for being, inter alia, unaccountable, unauthorized, inegalitarian, and oppressive. These challenges provide strong pro tanto reasons to think the practice morally impermissible. This paper considers the question: On what conditions is the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups permissible? By responding to skeptics’ challenges, I develop a systematic account of moral constraints that, if adopted, would make such representation permissible. The account that emerges shows that informal political representatives (IPRs) must aim to fulfill two sets of sometimes conflicting duties to the represented: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative’s actions advance the aims of the representation.
Wendy Salkin, “The Conscription of Informal Political Representatives,” Journal of Political Philosophy 29, no. 4: 429-455 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12246
- Abstract: Informal political representation—the phenomenon of speaking or acting on behalf of others although one has not been elected or selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure—plays a crucial role in advancing the interests of groups. Sometimes, those who emerge as informal political representatives (IPRs) do so willingly (voluntary representatives). But, often, people end up being IPRs, either in their private lives or in more public political forums, over their own protests (unwilling representatives) or even without their knowledge (unwitting representatives)—that is, they are conscripted. None of the few theories of informal political representation extant accommodate conscripted IPRs. The account detailed here introduces the phenomenon of conscripted informal political representation and explains its place in a complete theory of informal political representation. Conscripted IPRs can, like their voluntary counterparts, come to have significant power to influence how various audiences regard those for whom the conscripted IPRs speak or act. Upon attaining such power to influence, conscripted IPRs, like their voluntary counterparts, come to have pro tanto duties to those they represent—duties that arise despite IPRs’ unwittingness or unwillingness. Understanding the phenomenon of conscripted informal political representation allows us to surface essential normative questions about informal political representation that are otherwise occluded.
Wendy Salkin, "Judicial Representation: Speaking for Others from the Bench," in Disability, Health, Law, and Bioethics, edited by I. Glenn Cohen, Carmel Shachar, Anita Silvers, and Michael Ashley Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 211-220, doi: 10.1017/9781108622851.023
- Abstract: Because we have long clung to our traditional notions of political representation, many types of political representation, though ubiquitous and consequential, remain woefully undertheorized. This essay sets out the beginnings of a theory for one such phenomenon: judicial representation. Judicial representation occurs when, by virtue of what a judge says from the bench (for instance, in an opinion or during oral argument), they come to speak or act on behalf of the members of a group whose interests are at stake in a case. I develop an account of this phenomenon by examining Justice Marshall's representation of the severely intellectually disabled in his partial dissent in Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center.
Papers in Progress
"Bench Representation"
- Abstract: Look in any courthouse and you will find a judge who has at one point or another represented a party to a proceeding before them. Call this phenomenon bench representation. Bench representation occurs when a judge, through statements or actions undertaken during the performance of their official duties, speaks or acts for a party to the proceeding before them. Bench representation is among the most obvious and yet somehow least recognized ways that judges represent us. Critically undertheorized, bench representation is a phenomenon hidden in plain sight. This paper provides a preliminary characterization of this phenomenon (§II). While acknowledging the phenomenon of bench representation may help us better understand the role of the judge, it also presents unique challenges for traditional notions of judicial impartiality: How can a judge both represent a party to a proceeding before them and remain an impartial arbiter of that same proceeding? In §III, I articulate this challenge and, in §IV, I resolve the challenge by arguing that (i) some types of bench representation can be performed without imperiling impartiality, and (ii) while other types of bench representation may require a judge to depart from strict impartiality, such departures can sometimes be justified by the role they play in bolstering the fairness of a proceeding. I call such departures corrective partiality, distinguish corrective partiality from more familiar (and less defensible) forms of partiality, and advance conditions that must be satisfied for an exercise of partiality to count as corrective. In §V, I apply the theory developed here to Judge Rosemarie Aquilina’s bench representation of sexual assault and abuse victims at the sentencing hearing of Larry Nassar. In §VI, I conclude by discussing what this account of bench representation offers to both theories of representation and theories of impartiality, more generally. In particular, I conclude that (i) one may be an impartial representative—that is, one can give voice to another’s concerns or act in their interests without necessarily favoring their ends; and (ii) impartiality’s value is instrumental to a further end—fairness—and, in some cases (in particular, in cases proceeding within a context of markedly unfair background conditions), that end is better served by what I call corrective partiality, whereby a judge exhibits a narrowly circumscribed sort of partiality to a disadvantaged party in the interest of bolstering the fairness of the proceeding.
“Speaking For, Speaking About, Speaking With, Speaking Out” (for upcoming Politics, Philosophy & Economics workshop)
- Abstract: There is a move that people sometimes make when speaking publicly on matters of widespread concern. They will attempt to preempt or deflect charges that they speak for others. They will say that they are speaking out in favor of or against some matter. Or they will say that they are not speaking for a group but instead speaking with the group. They will clarify that they are speaking about the group, bringing attention to its members’ circumstances. They will tell you that they are advocates or allies. Their retweets are not endorsements. They mean only to amplify others’ voices. But they are not, whatever they are doing, speaking for others. They certainly do not intend to be anyone’s representative. They are, they assure you, just speaking for themselves. No doubt those who make these claims make them in good faith, intending to be deferential to those whose plights concern them. And it may of course be the case that those who deflect or preempt the label of “representative” are in fact speaking about a group or speaking out against a particular injustice or intending to just speak for themselves. But one is left wondering whether they do not also mean to preemptively shield themselves from responsibilities that would flow from being representatives—a state of affairs over which, I argue, they have less control than they seem to think. In this paper, I make distinctions between speaking for, speaking about, speaking with, and speaking out. As I show, it is not hard to distinguish between these four concepts. That is, in part, owing to the fact that the conceptual distinction will be somewhat stipulative. What will be a harder task is sorting out how these four communicative phenomena arise in lived experience. A harder task still will be to sort out how the ways these communicative phenomena arise make a difference to the responsibilities one has when engaging in them. I make some headway on each.
“You Say I Want a Revolution” (for upcoming special issue of The Monist on Du Bois and democracy)
- Abstract: John Brown led fugitive slaves, freedmen, and white abolitionists in an attack on Harpers Ferry. He planned to wrest arms from the U.S. Government, give them to fugitive slaves and freedmen, and thereby foment a slave revolt. When we consider whether a given political plan ought to be undertaken, often we are concerned with the contours of the plan itself: Is it right, permissible, prudent, effective, wise? More rarely do we ask who may (i) make the plan, (ii) decide to carry it out, or (iii) ask others to participate. Du Bois’s John Brown helps us consider these questions, put starkly in this case as: (Why) may John Brown, a white abolitionist, plan a slave revolt? Answering (i) and (ii) depends on answering a more general question: When is someone appropriately positioned to set the terms of a given political plan? Must they be an expert, a stakeholder, bound by the outcome? Candidate guiding principles emerge: expertise, understanding, stakeholding, exit, sacrifice. I examine the roles such principles play in evaluating whether and when a given actor, like John Brown, may plan a given action, like a raid or revolt. Answering (iii), I examine who can reasonably be asked to participate.