Locke, Waldron and the Moral Status of 'Crooks'

This article provides an assessment of Jeremy Waldron's arguments (in God, Locke and Equality and his subsequent 'Response to Critics') that Locke provides us with a compelling version of liberal equality. A close examination of the case of the criminally convicted in The Second Treatise shows how Locke's commitment to the principle of equality is compromised. This is revealed in part through recourse to contextualist considerations. This leads to the suggestion that Waldron's principled rejection of contextualist approaches to the history of political ideas can lead to a distorted understanding. It also suggests a need for a more thorough consideration of how a substantive principle of moral equality should apply in the field of criminal justice and in liberal democracy more generally.