Sandel's Justice

I am not one of the select few (roughly one in six Harvard undergrads) who has taken Michael Sandel's course on "Justice," although I've seen him speak and can imagine how enjoyable and interesting the course is.  Happily, Sandel is widening his audience.  His new book, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, is essentially a fancy-dress version of his lecture notes for the course.  The course will also be the subject of a 12-episode documentary on public television, and I look forward to it greatly.  Here is an excellent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education on Sandel, the course, and the book and documentary projects, with quotes taken from interviews with, among others, Niall Ferguson, Joshua Cohen, Stephen Holmes, and Charles Taylor.  

I am about halfway through the book and recommend it highly so far.  It's extremely -- perhaps exceedingly -- well-written and smooth, and in a clear way it provides a look at dilemmas and hypotheticals that are regularly used and, with the help of the book, could easily be adapted for use across the law school curriculum.  I am, indeed, struck by how many of the moral dilemmas Sandel uses as his springboards are taken from the realm of law.  

I also wonder about the following passage, early in the book: 

Elections are won and lost on these disagreements.  The so-called culture wars are fought over them.  Given the passion and intensity with which we debate moral questions in public life, we might be tempted to think that our moral convictions are fixed once and for all, by upbringing or faith, beyond the reach of reason.

But if this were true, moral persuasion would be inconceivable, and what we take to be public debate about justice and rights would be nothing more than a volley of dogmatic assertions, an ideological food fight.

Sandel quickly adds: "[I]t need not be this way.  Sometimes, an argument can change our minds."  Maybe I'm having a Fishy reaction, but I can't help but think that he settles this point too quickly and not sufficiently persuasively.  As I said, I recommend the book highly, but he certainly has not shown me so far that our moral convictions are not "beyond the reach of reason" or that moral persuasion is not "inconceivable" and public debate not "an ideological food fight."  He certainly has not shown me that this is necessarily so.  It is true that arguments can sometimes change our minds, but less true, I think, unless we have already accepted a number of controversial moves, such that we already accept both the competing values (utilitarianism, libertarianism, virtue, Kantianism, etc.) and, perhaps more importantly, the language in which the conversation is conducted.  The book so far strikes me as an excellent example of reasonable people reasoning together reasonably, but I'm not sure it demonstrates that these types of conversation are inevitable or self-evident, or that the kinds of inclusions and exclusions he makes to his "Justice club," even if they are wide enough to allow one in six Harvard undergrads to enroll, are any more necessary or uncontroversial.  In that sense, the book strikes me as being more a kind of Robert's Rules of Order for liberals than a proof or justification of the enterprise he's engaged in.  But it is a terrific manual nonetheless.