In recent decades, political philosophers have begun to rethink the value of equality. Rather than seeing equality as primarily a distributive value concerned at base with the allocation of certain goods, ‘relational egalitarians’ have argued that equality is a property that adheres, or fails to adhere, in social relationships. While this approach has proved a fertile basis for philosophical theorizing, relational egalitarians have yet to develop a systematic theory of justice on its basis and have sometimes failed to specify with sufficient clarity what equal social relationships consist in.

Christian Schemmel’s Justice and Egalitarian Relations is perhaps the most systematic attempt to develop a relational egalitarian theory of justice that approximates the sophistication found in rival distributive-egalitarian theories. Schemmel defends ‘a liberal theory of social justice which accords centre stage to egalitarian relations’ (Schemmel 2021, p. 10). He argues that relational egalitarianism can be articulated in line with liberal concern for establishing a fair system of cooperation among free and equal citizens. Schemmel thus contends that his view can show why inegalitarian social relations are unjust and ‘explain, from this starting point…which kinds of unequal distributions of goods are unjust…while remaining a liberal theory which does not tell individuals how to lead their own lives, which does not put forward a vision of the good communal life directing and dictating the content of individual conceptions of the good’ (ibid., p. 5). This, he believes, constitutes a departure from many alternative ways in which relational egalitarian approaches have been developed, which tended to emphasize a particular conception of the good life wherein perfectionist ideals of egalitarian social relations play a prominent role or to situate relational requirements among a plurality of moral requirements, with no clear ordering or structure.

Schemmel begins with a diagnosis of the central flaw of distributive theories. On Schemmel’s view, distributive egalitarian theories are ‘purely-recipient oriented’ and therefore cannot account for the independent relevance to justice of ‘the attitudes of social and political institutions’ which are ‘expressed in the way such institutions treat’ those subject to them (ibid., p. 38). Such attitudes, Schemmel demonstrates, matter in ways that are not reducible to their distributive effects, as different policies leading to equivalent distributive outcomes can differ with regard to justice because they express distinct attitudes—e.g., neglect or hostility, on the negative side, or respect, on the other—towards those affected by them. Schemmel thus offers an ‘expressive interpretation’ of relational egalitarianism, and couples this view with a substantive conception of equal social relations that fills in the content of what expressive egalitarianism demands. In order for institutions to treat their subjects—who are one another’s moral equals—in ways that express appropriate respect towards them, institutions must ensure that their subjects ‘encounter one another in relations of social and political equality’ (ibid., p. 56). This requires working out an account of what sort of egalitarian relations matter for social justice, which is the second major task of Schemmel’s book.

It is worth pausing to discuss how Schemmel’s expressivism fits into the larger debate about relational egalitarianism, as the elaboration of expressivism is one of Schemmel’s major innovations in Justice and Egalitarian Relations. Concern about the expressive function of state action is, as Schemmel recognizes, in some ways distinct from concern about the substantive character of social relations. The latter concerns the relations between persons (including those persons who rule and those who do not); the former concerns the relationship of institutions to those subject to them. Accordingly, it is fairly easy to imagine a purely ‘recipient-oriented’ theory of egalitarian justice in which concern about status inequality and domination play, but the expressive dimensions of state action play at best a derivative role. That is, I suspect many relational egalitarians might accept that there are sometimes instrumental reasons to care about the expressive dimension of state action insofar as state expression can contribute to (or perhaps even play a constitutive role in) the creation of social hierarchies (ibid., p. 39), but reject Schemmel’s core claim that ‘institutional treatment is of moral importance in itself, independently of its effects’ (ibid., p. 28). It is an open question, indeed, what would be lost by adopting this alternative approach, on which expression is only derivatively, not fundamentally, important.

Schemmel’s answer appeals to his analysis of what he calls the V example. This is a case he adapts from Thomas Pogge, wherein different kinds of state actions result in the same distributive consequence: that members of a certain group are deprived of access to a vital nutrient. Schemmel thus argues that it is only by appeal to the role of expression that we can explain why different ways of bringing about this result can be more or less unjust. However, it strikes me that one might use Schemmel’s own substantive account of non-domination and status equality to explain this kind of case without according expressivism any such fundamental role. Nevertheless, Schemmel’s expressivism constitutes a welcome contribution to debates about egalitarian justice, even if the normative basis of expressivism, as well as the social ontology on which it is based, both merit further development and defense. Indeed, Schemmel’s expressivism also guides his substantive conception of justice-relevant egalitarian social relations, which he develops in Chaps 3–6.

Schemmel develops his view by beginning from a broadly Rawlsian liberal conception of society and society on which persons are conceived of as free and equal participants in social cooperation with an interest in realizing their sense of justice and developing, pursuing, and revising their own conception of the good. Rather than starting from an independent account of inequalities of power and status and then balancing it against liberal demands, Schemmel seeks to tailor his conception of relational equality to the task of liberal justice (ibid., p. 63). This move is methodologically innovative—it constitutes one plausible way of formalizing the common claim that what relational equality requires is constrained by other values. However, rather than adopting a pluralist view, on which one first works out a set of normative requirements from equality alone and then balances them against other considerations, Schemmel builds normative constraints into his egalitarian theory from the beginning. Schemmel’s employment of this promising strategy relies on an essentially Rawlsian picture on which agents’ highest-order interests are given by their sense of justice and their capacity to form, pursue, and revise a conception of the good. Schemmel does not defend this Rawlsian starting point, and, as he recognizes, one might imagine an alternative way of executing it based on a different conception of the person, which might lead to different results (ibid., pp. 288–290).

The most important component of Schemmel’s substantive account is what he calls liberal non-domination (Chap. 3). Schemmel argues that relational egalitarians should be concerned with domination because domination involves particularly stark relations of power which express disrespect for people’s equal standing as participants in social cooperation. Schemmel’s understanding of domination departs from prominent republican accounts in how it analyzes which forms of domination raise problems of justice. Schemmel rejects, as is common among relational egalitarianism, the claim that domination by the state, as a corporate agent, is a matter of independent concern, instead arguing that egalitarians should object only to domination by individuals, which the state’s power often may enable. He also maintains that a theory of unjust domination ought to be moralized to be sensitive to the justice of the ends that a putative dominator’s power serves, assessed by recourse to the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation.

Specifically, Schemmel claims that relational egalitarians should be most concerned about domination in those respects which ‘are most central to the moral powers’ (ibid., p. 101). This leads Schemmel to defend a liberal view on which the state ought to stringently protect basic liberties and makes room for many forms of interpersonal relationships, even where these depart from the egalitarian ideal (Chap. 4). While Schemmel believes that concern about domination and power often have a certain ‘priority’, he argues that egalitarians should be concerned with more than just inequalities in power (Chap. 5). His view here is intricate (Chap. 6), and his discussion repays careful reading. On the one hand, he notes that liberal theories ought to be concerned about the way in which certain hierarchies of esteem can impair people’s self-respect, but he thinks this does not license a blanket condemnation of differential social esteem. On the other hand, he argues that pervasive social norms are unjust when they restrict opportunities for those on the losing end of the relevant esteem judgments (Chap. 6). Thus, Schemmel believes, that relational egalitarians should be both concerned with the distribution of certain goods, but also, independently, with the social mechanisms by which those unequal distributions are brought about.

Schemmel pays particular attention to cases wherein social norms which make implicit judgments about esteem and respect can work to disadvantage individuals. Such norms are unjust when they dictate that some are owed greater esteem than others, which can result in ‘a denial of significant opportunities’ due to ‘norm-coordinated’ action. The injustice here ‘consists of participation in’ social practices structured around unjust social norms because such participation expresses ‘problematic propositional content’ (p. 190). Here again we see the potential benefits of the expressive view. Schemmel’s discussion of social norms is intricate, but focused solely on norms of esteem (rather than de facto authority and respect). It thus fails to articulate something like a full account of what social status is. Since worries about status hierarchy have been central to the egalitarian tradition, this is arguably a limitation of Schemmel’s view. Nevertheless, Schemmel’s account of the distinctive wrong of being disadvantaged by social norms—namely, that participation in such a system of norms expresses problematic attitudes toward those disadvantaged by them—may prove a useful ingredient in developing a fuller conception of social status.

In the third part of the book, Schemmel sketches the implications of his egalitarian view for ‘core domains of social justice’ (ibid., p. 199)—specifically, what his account implies for theories of political rights (Chap. 7), distributive justice (Chap. 8), and health and healthcare (Chap. 9). The first two themes were selected because they form the core of standard theories of justice, and so a theory had nothing to say about economic distribution or political rights would be an obvious failure. The topic of health justice, on the other hand, is perhaps included for an additional reason: since intuitively, diminished health is not in the first instance unjust because it brings about unequal social relationships, accounting for it represents a challenge for a relational egalitarian theory. Each of the three chapters contains a rich discussion, and it will be impossible for me to do more than gesture at some of their most interesting aspects.

Schemmel argues that relational equality grounds a qualified case for equal political rights and their priority for two reasons. First, equal political rights are important to secure non-domination, a point now familiar in relational egalitarian discussions of democracy. Second, and more distinctively, equal political rights make a constitutive contribution to expressing appropriate respect for persons as agents with a sense of justice. Yet, Schemmel argues, it is sometimes permissible to deviate from equality in political rights. For example, it is permissible to deviate in order to preserve a formal deliberative division of labor, according representatives more power than ordinary citizens, on the assumption that citizens would fare better overall under such a system.

Schemmel then argues that relational egalitarians have strong reasons to care about the distribution of goods and resources. A familiar argument in favor of this claim, which Schemmel’s discussion also draws out in some length, is that inequalities in resources can easily be converted into inequalities in power and status. However, this does not on its own give relational egalitarians decisive reasons to favor policies that constrain distributive inequalities over those that block the conversion of distributive inequalities into inequalities of power and status. Schemmel argues, however, that relational egalitarians often overlook an ‘intrinsic reason for limiting distributive inequality: that it expresses respect for people’s equal status in the overall relation of social cooperation’ (ibid., p. 240). Schemmel concludes that this reason, in conjunction with instrumental reasons having to do with the effectiveness of alternative strategies for blocking the conversion of distributive into relational equality, suggests that distributive egalitarians should often prefer interventions that set limits to distributive inequality. As he puts it, ‘keeping distributive inequality in place thus means leaving the weapons in possession of the advantaged, and merely prohibiting their use—as opposed to real disarmament’ (ibid., p. 246).

Both the chapter on political inequality and the chapter on distributive inequality, however, might have benefited from a fuller discussion of matters of productive justice. While Schemmel recognizes his view might have implications for issues pertaining to the organization of labor and production (ibid., pp. 62, 73, 80, et passim), he does not explore this matter in depth. Since inequalities in capital ownership are one of the main mechanisms by which distributive inequality translates into unequal power, and since the debate about workplace control mirrors the debate about political rights, a fuller discussion of this issue would have helped to further concretize the distributive and political implications of Schemmel’s view.

In the case of health justice, Schemmel argues that there are three distinct reasons for egalitarians to be concerned about health inequalities. First, health inequalities are unjust if caused by unjust inegalitarian relations. Second, socially produced health inequalities require substantive justification, which many lack. Finally, societies fail to express adequate concern for members’ equal standing when they fail to respond to their health needs, regardless of how caused; and this Schemmel concludes, justifies a case for universal healthcare. While the theory is compelling, Schemmel recognizes that it faces limitations in the case of dealing with the health needs of noncooperators (ibid., pp. 283–285): specifically, those who lack the ability to contribute. It also seems likely, for example, that Schemmel’s theory entails that states should treat the health needs of recent immigrants differently than citizens. This strikes me as an implausible implication of Schemmel’s view which threatens to exacerbate, rather than temper, unequal social relations between persons.

This last issue suggests a broader problem. Schemmel develops his theory as a theory of justice for cooperators, and thus he leaves untreated how his account should deal with matters of global justice. Schemmel rightly suggests that his account likely has implications in this domain—at the very least, he argues, exclusion from cooperative schemes requires justification and that egalitarians should be concerned about power inequalities at the international level. Taking this issue seriously may require a fundamental rethinking of how and whether and how cooperation grounds distinctive claims to justice. Nevertheless, Schemmel’s discussion is rich and contains many resources for adaptation to these problems, and his distinctively expressive perspective may have interesting implications for debates about global justice if suitably developed. I learned much from Schemmel’s book, and hope it will influence the philosophical discussion about how to build more equitable societies for years to come.