Justice, fairness, and world ownership
Law and Philosophy 21 (3):249-273 (2002)
| Abstract | It is a central tenet of most contemporary theories of justice that the badly-off have a right to some of the resources of the well-off. In this paper, I take as my starting point two principles of justice, to wit, the principle of sufficiency, whereby individuals have a right to the material resources they need in order to lead a decent life, and the principle of autonomy, whereby once everybody has such a life, individuals should be allowed to pursue their conception of the good, and to enjoy the fruits of their labour in pursuit of such conception. I also endorse the value of fairness, whereby the right person or institution makes the decision as to whether to bring about justice.I show that justice and fairness can be satisfied only if we all enjoy a combination of private and collective rights over the world. In making that case, I shall argue that the set of ownership rights I advocate differs from readily available conceptions of restricted private ownership in two important respects. First, it is such that in some circumstances, two individuals or more can have control rights over the same property at the same time, not, as is standardly the case in legal systems, by contracting with one another (through gifts and joint purchase), but simply on grounds of justice. Second, it allows that, if necessary, property-owners be expropriated from their property without compensation. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,705 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesRichard J. Arneson (2010). Self-Ownership and World Ownership: Against Left-Libertarianism. Social Philosophy and Policy 27 (1):168-194.
Peter Vallentyne (2001). Self-Ownership. In Laurence Becker & Charlotte Becker (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2nd edition. Garland Publishing.
J. M. Elegido (1995). Intrinsic Limitations of Property Rights. Journal of Business Ethics 14 (5):411 - 416.
Hillel Steiner & Peter Vallentyne (2009). Libertarian Theories of Intergenerational Justice. In Axel Gosseries & Lucas Meyer (eds.), Justice Between Generations. Oxford University Press.
Peter Vallentyne (2001). Left-Libertarianism and Global Justice. In Burton M. Leiser & Tom Campbell (eds.), Human Rights in Philosophy & Practice. Ashgate Publishing.
Mathias Risse (2012). On Global Justice. Princeton University Press.
Amos Witztum (2005). Property Rights and the Right to the Fruits of One's Labor: A Note on Adam Smith's Jurisprudence. Economics and Philosophy 21 (2):279-289.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads5 ( #160,483 of 549,546 )Recent downloads (6 months)0How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
