A Phenomenological Approach to Legal Epistemic Injustice

Abstract

Injustices in legal contexts are widespread, yet we usually tend to think of them through a social lens. The study of epistemic injustices increases the resolution of this lens; it identifies how we wrong others as "knowers." In this paper, I propose that the tradition of phenomenology may be invoked to describe and identify instances of epistemic injustice in legal contexts. In order to justify this claim, I establish a phenomenological methodology predicated on the synthesis of two ideas: (1) the phenomenological recognition of the Other, and (2) society's duty to endow its members with an epistemic sphere of action.