Relational Justice and Social Morality

In Relational Justice Hanoch Dagan and Avihay Dorfman adopt a posture of indifference towards social morality. They take the position relational justice should neither follow nor try to improve social morality. This paper challenges the latter position and argues the relational justice project need not, and should not, be indifferent to social morality. While law should not follow social morality when it is immoral, lawmakers still have reasons to care when there is a gap between law and social morality. Trying to improve social morality to bring it into line with what law demands is one-way to address such a gap. Dagan and Dorfman renounce this solution arguing several reasons preclude law from trying to change social morality. These reasons include a commitment to liberal neutrality, an objection to rules based on motives, and an objection to ad hockery. This paper will show these reasons at most preclude using certain legal mechanisms to try to improve social morality. This paper will also explain in a general way how lawmakers should think about proposed laws that demand more of people than existing social morality, and the nature of the gap between relational justice and existing social morality.