The concepts of fairness

Julia Hörnle

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511576102.002

2 - The concepts of fairness

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 November 2009

Julia Hörnle

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Julia Hörnle: Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London

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Summary

An appreciation of unfairness develops early. A child of five, perhaps younger, is likely to know the meaning of unfairness … What any child might have more difficulty in doing is to give expression to the converse notion, the idea of fairness. Unfairness shouts out. Fairness goes unremarked.

(J. G. Riddall, Jurisprudence (London: Butterworths, 1999), 196)

Introduction

This book is concerned with the fair resolution of Internet disputes. It is therefore necessary to define procedural fairness at the outset.

It is first necessary to distinguish procedural fairness from distributive fairness. The latter is concerned with the allocation of resources, whereas procedural fairness is not concerned with the outcome of the allocation but rather the procedure of getting there. Therefore, a theory on dispute resolution (such as the one set forth in this book) is about procedural fairness.

Fairness is an extremely amorphous and elusive notion, and it is frequently used in an emotive way. While most people have an instinctive idea about a procedure being ‘unfair’ or ‘unjust’, it is much more difficult to build a comprehensive concept of the converse: fairness in dispute resolution.

This chapter builds a concept of fairness using the building blocks of the traditional principle of due process, and relates this to general theories of procedural fairness. In doing this, the theory of fairness adopted in this book leans heavily on Rawls' theory of justice.

Type: Chapter
Information: Cross-border Internet Dispute Resolution , pp. 4 - 18

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511576102.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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