Eric Shoemaker is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto. His primary research interests are in democratic theory and the philosophy of law, and his work thus far has focused on the topic of the political applications of random selection. Eric completed his JD at the University of Toronto in 2020. Eric has taught several courses at the University of Toronto, including Environmental Ethics, Law and Morality, and Business Ethics.
What is your favorite thing that you’ve written?
I think I’m most pleased with my paper “A Justification for Political Random Selection Based on Democratic Equality”, which has very recently won the Erik Olin Wright Prize. This paper is the latest iteration of my attempt to combine many ideas that I’ve been working on related to political random selection. When I first learned about the concept of randomly selecting legislators from Alexander Guererro’s paper “Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative” I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Almost all of the arguments that thus far have been put forward in favor of political random selection have focused on the idea that randomly selected legislators are instrumentally better than elected ones—they can be counted upon to produce better public policies. My argument advances a very different point: that choosing our legislators by random selection (as opposed to election) treats citizens as equally worthy of influence over the law, and that this concern for citizen equality is at the heart of why democracy is worthwhile.
What are you most proud of in your professional life?
Between March 2021 and March 2022, I spoke virtually at twelve philosophy conferences, including the meeting of the Eastern American Philosophical Association in Baltimore, and the meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association in Edmonton. Given that virtual conferences are becoming rarer, I doubt that I will ever again have the chance to give so many talks at so many different universities in one year. I received a lot of valuable feedback on several of my projects, met a lot of wonderful people, and attended a great many fascinating talks.
What are you working on right now?
Right now I’m working on several thesis chapters relating to political random selection and adjacent issues in democratic theory. I’m departing from what I’ve written in “A Justification for Political Random Selection Based on Democratic Equality” by attempting to argue for political random selection from the concept of what a democracy is, which is shared among democratic theorists generally, rather than from a particular view of why democracy is valuable. I’m also working on a book review of Christina Lafont’s Democracy Without Shortcuts. In my view, this book contains the most formidable objection to political random selection that I have yet seen.
What do you like to do outside work?
I play a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, and similar tabletop roleplaying games, and I read a lot of books about tabletop roleplaying games. I’m even developing rules for a tabletop roleplaying game of my own design. It is a very entertaining hobby. Outside of that, I am a casual birdwatcher. I have spent a fair amount of time at Toronto’s Woodbine Beach and Tommy Thompson park, which are some of the best places to see birds in the city. I’ve also seen a fair number of minks and foxes in these areas, which is always very exciting.
What cause or charity do you care about most?
I am a huge fan of Give Directly—a charity that directly transfers money to people living in poverty. In advocating for political random selection in casual conversation and at conferences I’ve encountered a lot of skepticism about the capacity of ordinary people, particularly those with less formal education, to effectively pursue their own interests and manage their own affairs. There is a great deal of empirical evidence, some provided by experiments conducted by Give Directly, that when empowered, ordinary people will pursue their own good better than any benefactor could pursue it for them. As Mill said in Considerations on Representative Government, “If circumstances allow the amount of public duty assigned [to anyone] to be considerable, it makes him an educated man.”
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Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
