Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
A talk in the John Austin Seminar Series
Speaker: Lars Vinx, Professor of Jurisprudence (Cambridge)
Chair: George Letsas, Professor of Philosophy of Law (UCL Laws)
About the Seminar:
The ideal of meritocracy has recently come under considerable pressure in political theory. Critics of meritocracy like Michael Sandel and Daniel Markovits argue not merely that existing societies fail to live up to meritocratic standards. Like the sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term ‘meritocracy’ in the late 1950’s, Markovits and Sandel claim that a society that perfectly realizes the ideal of meritocracy would be a deeply unjust dystopia.
This paper argues that the ideal of meritocracy, however, can be understood in different ways. It distinguishes the different strands of meritocratic thinking and evaluates them separately so as to build a concept of meritocracy that is not vulnerable to the critical challenges which have been levelled against the meritocratic ideal.
A talk in the John Austin Seminar Series
Speaker: Lars Vinx, Professor of Jurisprudence (Cambridge)
Chair: George Letsas, Professor of Philosophy of Law (UCL Laws)
About the Seminar:
The ideal of meritocracy has recently come under considerable pressure in political theory. Critics of meritocracy like Michael Sandel and Daniel Markovits argue not merely that existing societies fail to live up to meritocratic standards. Like the sociologist Michael Young, who coined the term ‘meritocracy’ in the late 1950’s, Markovits and Sandel claim that a society that perfectly realizes the ideal of meritocracy would be a deeply unjust dystopia.
This paper argues that the ideal of meritocracy, however, can be understood in different ways. It distinguishes the different strands of meritocratic thinking and evaluates them separately so as to build a concept of meritocracy that is not vulnerable to the critical challenges which have been levelled against the meritocratic ideal.
