The Grounds of Justice

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Risse
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
Comprehensive View ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Pluralist Approach

This book explores the question of what it is for a distribution to be just globally and proposes a new systematic theory of global justice that it calls pluralist internationalism. Up to now, philosophers have tended to respond to the problem of global justice in one of two ways: that principles of justice either apply only within states or else apply to all human beings. The book defends a view “between” these competing claims, one that improves on both, and introduces a pluralist approach to what it terms the grounds of justice—which offers a comprehensive view of obligations of distributive justice. It also considers two problems that globalization has raised for political philosophy: the problem of justifying the state to outsiders and the problem of justifying the global order to all.

Justice, international

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Barry ◽  
Matt Matravers
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
The State ◽  
International Justice ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Equality ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
State Relations

Although it has been denied (by, for example, F.A. Hayek 1976) that the concept of distributive justice has application within states, it is not controversial that there can be unjust laws and unjust behaviour by individuals and organizations. It has, however, been argued that it makes no sense to speak of justice and injustice beyond the boundaries of states, either because the lack of an international sovereign entails that the conditions for justice do not exist, or because the state constitutes the maximal moral community. Both arguments are flawed. Without them, we are naturally led to ask what are the implications of the widely-held idea of fundamental human equality, the belief that in some sense human beings are of equal value. This cannot be coherently deployed in a way that restricts its application to within-state relations. In either a utilitarian or Kantian form it generates extensive international obligations. An objection that is often made to this conclusion is that the obligations derived are so stringent that compliance cannot reasonably be asked under current political conditions. But this shows (if true) that current political conditions are incompatible with international justice.

Global Justice and the Role of the State

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Miriam Ronzoni ◽  
Laura Valentini
Keyword(s):  
Global Justice ◽  
The State ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Egalitarian Justice

The chapter critically analyzes the role played by the state in the global justice debate. It surveys the different ways in which statists and cosmopolitans invoke the state either to justify the scope and content of their preferred principles of justice or to explain how such principles might be realized. The chapter also distinguishes between two conceptualizations of the state: as a system of institutions and as an agent in its own right. On the basis of this analysis, the authors conclude that both at the level of justification and at that of realization, the most plausible positions with respect to global justice lie somewhere in between full-blown cosmopolitanism and full-blown statism. While principles of egalitarian justice are not confined to the state, they do not extend in identical form to the global realm. Similarly, while the state—as we know it—is insufficient to realize plausible principles of justice (be they statist or cosmopolitan), what realizing justice requires falls short of the creation of a comprehensive global sovereign.

scholarly journals Nature and Artifice in Hobbes’s International Political Thought

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-34
Author(s):  
Maximilian Jaede
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The State ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Lasting Peace ◽  
Contrary Effect

This article argues that the artificiality of Hobbesian states facilitates their coexistence and eventual reconciliation. In particular, it is suggested that international relations may be characterised by an artificial equality, which has a contrary effect to the natural equality of human beings. Unlike individuals in Hobbes’s account of the state of nature, sovereigns are not compelled to wage war out of fear and distrust, but have prudential reasons to exercise self-restraint. Ultimately rulers serve as disposable figureheads who can be replaced by a foreign invader. Thus, this article highlights the implications of Hobbes’s views on sovereignty by acquisition, which allow for states to be decomposed and reassembled in order to re-establish lasting peace. It is concluded that these findings help to explain why Hobbes does not provide something akin to modern theories of international relations, as foreign affairs appear to be reducible to a matter of either prudence or political philosophy.

scholarly journals THE LIMITS OF BACKGROUND JUSTICE

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 352-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Porter Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Principles Of Justice

AbstractThe argument from background justice is that conformity to Lockean principles of justice in agreements and transactions does not preclude the development of inequalities that undermine the freedom and fairness of those very transactions, and that, therefore, special principles are needed to regulate society's “basic structure.” Rawls offers this argument as his “first kind of reason” for taking the basic structure to be the primary subject of justice. Here I explore the background justice argument and its implications for questions about the scope of distributive justice. As it turns out, the background justice argument can offer no independent support for conclusions about the scope of distributive justice. For the special principles that it justifies inherit their scope from conclusions that must be established or assumed in advance. These prior conclusions are precisely what is at issue in debates about global justice.

Justice and authority in the global order

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 2059-2072 ◽  
Author(s):  
TERRY NARDIN
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Global Order ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Principles Of Justice

AbstractThe global justice debate has largely ignored law. But that debate presupposes a legal order within which principles of justice could be implemented. Paying attention to law alters our understanding of global justice by requiring us to distinguish principles that are properly prescribed and enforced within a legal order from those that are not. Given that theories of global governance depreciate law and that cosmopolitan and confederal theories are utopian, the most promising context for a realistic global justice discourse is one that is focused on strengthening, not transcending, the international legal order.

Global Distributive Justice: An Egalitarian Perspective

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 139-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Fabre
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
National Boundaries

A good deal of political theory over the last fifteen years or so has been shaped by the realization that one cannot, and ought not, consider the distribution of resources within a country in isolation from the distribution of resources between countries. Thus, thinkers such as Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge advocate extensive global distributive policies; others, such as Charles Jones and David Miller, explicitly reject the view that egalitarian principles of justice should apply globally and claim that national communities have only duties to help other countries be viable economically and meet the basic needs of their members. In the global justice debate, pretty much all parties acknowledge that we have obligations of distributive justice to for-eigners. The question is how strong those obligations are, and in particular whether national boundaries can make any difference to the distribution of resources between members of different countries.

The State as an Agent of Trade Justice

2019 ◽  
pp. 121-138
Author(s):  
Mathias Risse ◽  
Gabriel Wollner
Keyword(s):  
Global Justice ◽  
The State ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Normative Role

This chapter theorizes the normative role of states in the global order generally and in trade specifically. One challenge for a theory of multiple grounds of justice is that an assignment of duties is not straightforward. A theory of global justice that recognizes multiple grounds requires a differentiated vocabulary to outline obligations for different agents, some designed to fit the role and importance of states for global justice, and some designed for other actors. The chapter develops the constrained agency perspective from Chapter 6 (which started to work with some of that vocabulary) for the role of the state within a pluralistic theory of global justice.

A Sceptic’s Guide to Justice in International Tax Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (02) ◽  
pp. 499-512
Author(s):  
Laurens van Apeldoorn
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Tax Policy ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
The State ◽  
International Taxation ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
International Tax ◽  
International Tax Policy

AbstractWhat, if any, are the moral norms governing the international taxation regime if the sceptic is right to think that considerations of distributive justice do not apply beyond the state? I sketch an answer to this question by examining Tsilly Dagan’s illuminating recent book International Tax Policy: Between Competition and Cooperation. In her work, Dagan identifies the position of Thomas Nagel, an influential global justice sceptic, as predominant among commentators in legal scholarship and policy debates on international taxation. According to Nagel, multilateral cooperation is appropriately conceived as a bargain between mutually self-interested states. In tracing the implications of his position for international tax policy Dagan argues that even a sceptic like Nagel is committed to identifying some considerations of distributive justice beyond the state to ameliorate the harmful effects of tax competition. In response I argue that Dagan is correct to claim that the global justice sceptic is committed to seeing cooperation in international tax policy as constrained by moral norms, but that these norms are what Nagel calls humanitarian duties rather than duties of justice. I establish that Dagan’s argument that Nagel is committed to a duty of justice to promote distributive justice abroad faces some significant obstacles and suggest that Dagan can ground her argument in a humanitarian duty that Nagel does accept. The upshot of the argument is that even if the sceptic is right to think that considerations of distributive justice do not apply beyond the state, multilateral tax cooperation is governed by a duty of states to prevent human rights deficits where they can.

How to Justify Principles of Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Zhang Guoqing
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
The Core ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Veil

AbstractJohn Rawls assumes that in the original position, under the veil of ignorance, after bargaining amongst each other, free, equal, moral and rational persons would make a rational decision to accept the principles of justice as fairness and thus the principles are established. Critics, however, question the authenticity and validity of this justification strategy. When rational individuals take the principles of justice as an original agreement, it is not a real contract. Rawls’s conception of justice as fairness is just a personal notion, some individuals may accept it, but it is impossible to be accepted by all human beings in a real world. Therefore there is a justification/acceptance paradox of those principles which are the core of his political philosophy. So how should we justify those principles? Its answers may be provided not in the light of a philosophical justification but of a scientific one.

Kok-Chor Tan, Justice, Institutions, and Luck: The Site, Ground, and Scope of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. ix + 208.

Utilitas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-132
Author(s):  
DANIEL HALLIDAY
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Luck Egalitarian ◽  
Oxford University Press

Political liberals very often appeal to a so-called division of moral labour that separates the regulation of institutions from that of personal conduct. Probably the most famous statement of this idea is found in these remarks from John Rawls: The principles of justice for institutions must not be confused with the principles which apply to individuals and their actions in particular circumstances. These two kinds of principles apply to different subjects and must be discussed separately. (A Theory of Justice, rev. edn. (1999), p. 47) Kok-Chor Tan's excellent new book renews and extends the case for accepting some version of Rawls's view, which Tan calls the ‘institutional focus’ in distributive justice. If Tan is right, then the liberal focus on institutions is not only defensible in its own right, but also helps support further elements of egalitarian theorizing, including some that Rawlsians often reject. In particular, Tan believes that a focus on institutions helps secure a more plausible ‘luck egalitarian’ approach to distributive justice, and that it also supports a version of cosmopolitanism about global justice.

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