Summary Of Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, And Utopia

In his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick describes an interesting and unique theory of justice which focuses not on the person and his rights, but instead considers each person to be a piece of property owned by him or herself. He then describes the rights of this property. In his entitlement theory of justice, Nozick described three principles which outline how one may come to hold property, how property can be justly transferred from one person to another, and how to rectify injustices. According to Nozick, these principles form the basis for identifying injustices. This serves to minimize the power of the state. Nozick believes the state should have no more power than is necessary for it to enforce his principles. While Nozick’s

One of them is the case of civil asset forfeiture. Although this is a relatively minor part of the documentary, it provides a very clear and obvious way to apply Nozick’s theory. This is a controversial issue; however, due to widespread acceptance of the sentiment, it is reasonable to assume that civil asset forfeiture is unjust. In a few words, civil asset forfeiture grants police officers the ability to seize the belongings of a person suspected of a crime even without formally charging that person. If Nozick’s principle of justice in transfer is applied here, it is clear that this is not a just transfer. The suspect does not agree to give up his property, but it is taken regardless. It may then simply be a case for Nozick’s third principle of rectification of injustice. Since the suspect has yet to be charged, however, and since police officers rarely intend on seeking out the original owner and returning the property, this cannot be justified by Nozick’s third

By assuming an ideal society, Nozick is especially susceptible to Mills’ criticism that his theory, while possible in an ideal society, does not help us since we are not in that society and it does not tell us how to get to that society. Application of Nozick’s theory today would not result in our non-ideal society becoming ideal nor would it provide much help in solving our problems with justice. Rather, it would create more problems than it solves. Nozick’s theory says “a distribution is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution” (Nozick 151). There is easily demonstrable and well known proof that the distribution of holdings in today’s society is not just. Several cases are mentioned previously in this paper and all of them have yet to be rectified. Therefore, Nozick’s principle of rectification of injustice must attempt to rectify these. This principle would have to use an estimate of what would have happened had the injustice not occurred and redistribute holdings in order to match that estimate. (Nozick 152-153). Nozick does not specify how far back this estimate must go in order to calculate a just distribution. In fact Nozick himself poses this question: “How far back must one go in wiping clean the historical slate of injustice," but leaves it to other philosophers to answer, suggesting that readers look at Boris