Equity, Justice, and the Rule of Law

Equity, Justice, and the Rule of Law

Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Nick Gooding on July 29, 2026 as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. The Graduate Institute Office has provided this description of the event: “In Book V, Chapter 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers an account of ‘equity’ (epieikeia). The virtue of equity, according to Aristotle, serves as a necessary ‘correction of justice according to law.’ This presents us with difficulty: on the one hand, the need for ‘equitable’ judges seems to belong to the nature of the case – there is simply no way of capturing the demands of justice in a set of general rules; on the other hand, one thing justice demands is that ‘like cases be treated alike’ and that all individuals not be treated arbitrarily – and this seems to require legal verdicts to be determined by general rules, with judicial discretion kept to an absolute minimum. I want, in this talk, to go some way towards resolving this tension. I’ll do so on the basis of a careful consideration of why justice resists being reduced to a set of rules, and why we nonetheless value the rule of law.”

Santa Fe, NM

2026-07-29

Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.

sound

mp3

English

SF_GoodingN_Equity_Justice_and_the_Rule_of_Law_2026-07-29