Hello, and welcome to Overthink.
The podcast for two friends who are also professors talk about philosophy and everyday life.
I'm Ellie Anderson.
And I'm David Peña-Guzman.
David,
I'm so excited to be talking today about this topic because even
though the word discretion might not immediately call to mind fascinating stories of over-bureaucratization,
indeed, that is what we are talking about.
We're going to be speaking later in the episode with Barry Lamb,
who recently wrote a book about this.
And let me say, I really enjoyed reading this book, Ellie,
where Lamb essentially comes to the defense of the concept of discretion,
arguing that sometimes we need to give people in positions of power discretionary decision-making capabilities.
And this is a thought-provoking position to take in a world where we associate rule following and rule enforcement with justice,
right?
We tend to define in the West justice as applying rules sort of mechanically and equally to everybody.
And so the idea that there could be a philosophical defense for the exception or
for giving individuals the right not to enforce a rule.
Seems counterintuitive to the way many of us think about why we have laws and rules in the first place.
Yeah, though, at the same time,