Lawmaking & The Veil of Ignorance

Making Laws & The Veil of Ignorance (hey, maybe sometimes ignorance is good)  

Contemporary philosopher John Rawls wrote a classic work called A Theory of Justice, and in that work he discussed the "Veil of Ignorance."  As one commentator describes Rawls' concept of the veil of ignorance:

"Imagine that you have set for yourself the task of developing a totally new social contract for today's society. How could you do so fairly? Although you could never actually eliminate all of your personal biases and prejudices, you would need to take steps at least to minimize them. Rawls suggests that you imagine yourself in an original position behind a veil of ignorance . Behind this veil, you know nothing of yourself and your natural abilities, or your position in society. You know nothing of your sex, race, nationality, or individual tastes. Behind such a veil of ignorance all individuals are simply specified as rational, free, and morally equal beings. You do know that in the "real world", however, there will be a wide variety in the natural distribution of natural assets and abilities, and that there will be differences of sex, race, and culture that will distinguish groups of people from each other."

One can appreciate the desirability of having people make decisions based on what is good for their community as a whole, without regard to their own self-interest.

I often think about the veil of ignorance when I observe intense lobbying for, or against, some legislation that gets proposed.  The veil is pretty thin these days.  Special interest groups are able to rapidly assess the legislative impact of almost any proposal and to either derail the proposal, or to shape the verbiage of the proposed law for their benefit.  This situation will continue to get worse as information becomes more freely available.  The good news, I suppose, is that the wider dissemination of news about potential legislation is being passed to ordinary citizens as well.  But, ordinary citizens aren't well-organized.  And they usually lack money, or campaign contributions, which are the life-blood of contemporary law making.    So there is a clear mismatch in capability between the common folk and the special interest groups represented by lobbyists.

But don't misunderstand me.  I'm not naive enough to think that legislators weren't always, to some degree, influenced by how they perceived that legislation would help those "in their camp."  Somehow, though, I get the feeling that in the early days of the Republic more laws were passed primarily because a majority of the lawmakers truly were trying to solve a social problem.  The laws that are passed today by Congress are analyzed to the Nth degree, and almost no law gets passed at the national level that hasn't been vetted by at least one or two major interested parties.  Hell, the interested parties often write the laws and hand them to the lawmakers to propose.  Are these laws effective?  Maybe so, but only to the people who created them.   Most laws that get passed in Congress are completely incomprehensible to a normal, well-educated person, and a large number of them simply make no sense.  Unless, of course, you are one of the beneficiaries of such laws.  Then the whole process makes perfect sense.

Last update: 7/15/2002; 5:32:20 PM.