impartiality a state or disposition achieved to the degree that one’s actions or attitudes are not influenced in a relevant respect by which members of a relevant group are benefited or harmed by one’s actions or by the object of one’s attitudes. For example, a basketball referee and that referee’s calls are impartial when the referee’s applications of the rules are not affected by whether the calls help one team or the other. A fan’s approval of a call lacks impartiality if that attitude results from the fan’s preference for one team over the other. Impartiality in this general sense does not exclude arbitrariness or guarantee fairness; nor does it require neutrality among values, for a judge can be impartial between parties while favoring liberty and equality for all. Different situations might call for impartiality in different respects toward different groups, so disagreements arise, for example, about when morality requires or allows partiality toward friends or family or country. Moral philosophers have proposed various tests of the kind of impartiality required by morality, including role reversibility (Kurt Baier), universalizability (Hare), a veil of ignorance (Rawls), and a restriction to beliefs shared by all rational people (Bernard Gert). See also ETHICS, HARE, RAWLS, UNIVERSAL – IZABILITY. W.S.-A.