5.5: Justice, the Good, and the Problem of Agreement
Watch this lecture until 24:01. While you watch, ask yourself: how can we establish a just society without arriving at some kind of consensus about what the good is -- in this case, the good for same-sex couples and other members of the moral community? In this lecture, Sandel makes the case that questions of morality and justice cannot be separated from questions about the good. The problem, though, is that all members of a society seldom agree on what the good is. This leads to a discussion of same-sex marriage, which was a hotly contested issue in the United States.
Read the syllabus from the 2003 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas. In this decision, the Supreme Court struck down a previous ruling and affirmed that state laws against sodomy violate the constitutional right to due process. The decision was seen as a major advance for equal rights among the LGBT community. Arguments in the case centered on how we ought to understand the basic concept of liberty.