In such a framework, Rawls argued, unequal distribution of resources is defensible only if it is beneficial to even the worst-off individual in society.
Thus, the majority's invalidation of the Balanced Treatment Act is defensible only if the record indicates that the Louisiana Legislature had no secular purpose.
The revolving door between elite academia and the higher levels of government is defensible only insofar as the inside knowledge of former bureaucrats is used to better educate students.
Republican free-market orthodoxy doesn't have room for "picking winners" or for massive government spending on industrial policy; the Democratic aversion to helping big business means that subsidies are defensible only when they are aligned with a progressive cause, such as solar power.
In response, a correspondence theorist will point out: (a) The identity theory is defensible only for propositions as truthbearers, and only for propositions construed in a certain way, namely as having objects and properties as constituents rather than ideas or concepts of objects and properties; that is, for Russellian propositions.
In this view, the poems were defensible not only because of their technical brilliance, but also because they established a new confessional mode associated with a revolutionary technical openness and a hypersensitive [End Page 69] awareness of the natural world.
Still, Black's position was defensible.
Given the many hazards involved in assessing the subjective intent of governmental decisionmakers, the first prong of Lemon is defensible, I think, only if the text of the Establishment Clause demands it.
We really think it's defensible, and not only defensible — we really think it's the best way to build these tissues.
There are, however, reasons to think that this response is itself defensible only if retributivists accept two further positions.
