Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good

by Martha Minow

In a time of increasing privatization of public services, can we ensure that profit doesn't outweigh the public good?
Nowadays for-profit companies manage everything from education to criminal justice. It's a fact of life that private commercial interests are here to stay. In school, students watch Channel One, a broadcast of news features and commercials geared to a young audience, and are served fast food from Taco Bell and Pizza Hut in their cafeterias. Privately managed prisons balance profits against the costs of rehabilitating and educating inmates. For-profit hospitals treat patients but also seek to maximize returns for their shareholders. What happens when public and private interests come into conflict?
As always, renowned legal scholar Martha Minow ("a human dynamo," says Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan) sheds light on this complicated picture. She argues that these new arrangements aren't necessarily bad--market forces can be used to improve public services--but the partnership must be structured correctly. Certain public values must be preserved, including antidiscrimination and respect for individual autonomy and choice.
Praise for Between Vengeance and Forgiveness:
"Imaginative, compassionate, and compelling, Martha Minow's Between Vengeance and Forgiveness is a tour de force."
--Eric K. Yamamoto, University of Hawaii
"In an area of wrenching human and difficult intellectual dimensions, Martha Minow has written an extraordinarily perceptive, sensitive-
and moving-book."
--Abram Chayes, author of Preventing Conflict in the Post-Communist World

232 pages, Hardcover

First published July 17, 2002

About the author

Martha Louise Minow is an American legal scholar and the 300th Anniversary University Professor at Harvard University. She served as the Dean of Harvard Law School between 2009 and 2017 and has taught at the Law School since 1981.