Just Waiting: The Ethics of Queues and Waiting Lists

Queues are pervasive in our world, determining our entitlement or order of access to goods ranging from hospital appointments and organ transplants to concert tickets and supermarket tills. This paper argues that queues have an important role to play in understanding what we owe to each other. I provide a framework outlining the conceptual nature and moral significance of queues and waiting lists. First, I explore what function queues serve and how they should be organised. Second, I outline four arguments to show the moral significance of queues, including their role in promoting temporal justice, upholding fairness, expressing relational equality, and respecting social norms. Third, I defend my account against two charges: that queues are unjust and that they are normatively redundant. My account of queues adds an important normative framework to govern the distribution of goods over and above the language of needs and justice.