ABSTRACT
In Relational Justice, Hanoch Dagan and Avihay Dorfman defend a longstanding intuition of bilateral normativity. They argue that private law, for the most part, should structure legal relationships so that parties show reciprocal respect for each other’s self-determination and substantive equality. In this critical notice, I argue against the plausibility of their account. My main claim is that a commitment to individual self-determination and substantive equality should be societal and not bilateral. Rather than reciprocal respect for each other’s self-determination and equality within bilateral relationships, those who care about these values should require that private law help secure them on a societal scale.
Arie Rosen, Against Relational Justice (Critical Notice: Relational Justice: A Theory of Private Law by Hanoch Dagan and Avihay Dorfman), Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence. Published online by Cambridge University Press 7 August 2025.
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