Mark D. White

Writer, editor, teacher

recent posts

about

I’m a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the College of Staten Island/CUNY, where I teach courses in philosophy, economics, and law, and the author/editor/co-editor of several books.

Category: Justice

  • Justice is done—and done the right way—in SCOTUS’ decision on marriage equality

    Mark D. White Today the Supreme Court of the United States—now, thanks to Justice Scalia's dissent in yesterday's King v Burwell dissent, "officially" known as SCOTUS—declared marriage to be a right for all, covering both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy affirms same-sex marriage to be a matter of rights and…

  • An Answer to “Questions for Free-Market Moralists”

    Mark D. White I read with great interest Amia Srinivasan's contribution to the New York Times' philosophy column "The Stone" titled "Questions for Free-Market Moralists." After introducing the political philosophies of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, she states that "on the whole, Western societies are still more Rawlsian than Nozickian: they tend to have social…

  • Uganda and anti-gay law: This (again) is why you don’t put basic human rights to a vote.

    Mark D. White My stomach turns at the news that Uganda is set to pass a law that imposes life sentences and sometimes the death sentence for homosexual acts: KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda's anti-gay bill will be passed before the end of 2012 despite international criticism of the draft legislation, the speaker of the…

  • How Much Inequality Do We Want? This is the Wrong Question.

    Mark D. White Today on The Atlantic's website, Dan Ariely describes an experiment he conducted with Mike Norton in which they survey people about both the current distribution of wealth in the U.S. and what they thought the ideal distribution of wealth is. Not surprisingly, they find that most everybody underestimates the level of inequality of wealth,…

  • Is health or health care a public concern, a right, or a need?

    Mark D. White One of the topics that fascinates me, but which I never seem to have time to catch up on, is the moral/political status of health and health care. In most cases (other than particularly infectious or contagious diseases), I consider health and health care to be matters of personal choice and responsibility,…

  • Marriage equality in New York: It should have been done better.

    Mark D. White Last nigt New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill allowing same-sex marriage after a lengthy process of legislative tomfoolery. Those who have read my previous posts and work on the issue will not be surprised to hear that I am very happy about the result and less than pleased with the…

  • Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Defended on Moral Terms, Not Economic Ones

    Mark D. White Sociologist Jaye Cee Whitehead (Pacific University) has a wonderful piece in The New York Times today titled "The Wrong Reasons for Same-Sex Marriage," arguing that the recent arguments espousing the economic benefits of same-sex marriage for cash-strapped states and municipalities miss the point: Those making these economic arguments probably have the best…

  • Inequality: Confusing the Issue

    Mark D. White The topic of today's "Room for Debate" feature at The New York Times is inequality, prompted by a recent paper by Mike I. Norton and Dan Ariely that shows a large number of Americans would prefer to live in a society with a more equitable distribution of wealth (like Sweden). Norton himself…

  • Debating the Insanity Defense

    Mark D. White In the most recent "Room for Debate" feature in The New York Times, five scholars involved in law, psychiatry, and criminal justice discuss the current state of the insanity defense in light of the Tucson shootings. A nice range of viewpoints is presented, from Alan Dershowitz's argument that the insanity defense has…

  • The Implications of Human Fallibility for the Future of Capital Punishment

    Mark D. White In a recent op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal, Barry C. Sheck of the Innocence Project detailed the wrongful execution in Texas of convicted murderer Claude Jones after then-Governor George W. Bush was not informed of Jones' request for a last-minute DNA test on the one piece of physical evidence tying him to his alleged…