Justifying Institutions for Future Generations Based on the Mitigation of Bias and Intergenerational Justice

Contemporary institutions, policies and practices exhibit systematic bias in favour of the interests of contemporaries and against the interests of future generations. Institutions for future generations have the potential to mitigate this bias: a) procedurally by giving a voice to the interests of future generations by a proxy articulating their interests, and b) substantively by increasing the possibility of substantive realisation of intergenerational justice through such proxy fairly factoring in the interests of future generations. Proxy representation of future generations is further justified by the democratic values of equality and inclusion which in turn maximise the goal of securing intergenerational justice. In this fashion, intergenerational justice operates as an overarching normative basis for institutions to represent future generations. The limited power usually assigned to such institutions, has meant, however, that they tend to operate at most as secondary rather than primary agents of justice - using O’Neill’s terminology.