Global Justice

The institutional theory of property is that view that property rights are entirely and essentially conventional and are the creatures of states and coercively backed legal systems. In this paper, I argue that, although states and legal systems have a valuable role in defining property rights, the institutional story is not the whole story. Rather, the property rights hat we have reason to recognize as part of justice are partly conventional in character and partly rooted in universal human interests and (...) dispositions. (shrink)

There are some premise-by-premise reconstructions in political philosophy which are flawed, because they omit at least one premise or misword at least one premise. This paper focuses on a reconstruction by Richard Child. The original argument is by Andrea Sangiovanni and is about whether egalitarian values of distributive justice apply both within a state and globally. Child’s reconstruction has been reproduced in a paper by Ian Davis, who approves of it. But I point out five logical problems with the reconstruction.

Cosmopolitans like Gillian Brock, Charles Beitz, and Thomas Pogge argue that the principles of justice selected and arranged in lexical priority in Rawls’ first original position would—and should for the same reasons as in the first—also be selected in Rawls’ second original position. After all, the argument goes, what reasons other than morally arbitrary ones do we have for selecting a second set of principles? A different, though undoubtedly related, point of contention is the cosmopolitan charge that Rawls fails to (...) consider the unfavorable conditions that owe themselves to global factors. Perhaps there was a time when interconnectedness and interdependency between states was not a factor, but in the current global order, this is certainly not the case. While this paper will address other related cosmopolitan concerns mentioned in Brock’s work, it is these two points that are perhaps the two biggest threats to the Rawlsian project and, as such, it is these two points that will be the primary focus of this paper. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss justice in the distribution of resources, both within states and across different states. On one influential view, it is always unjust for one person to have less than another through no fault of her own. State borders, on this account, have no importance in determining which distributions are just. I show that an alternative approach is needed. I argue that distributions of wealth are only unjust in so far as they issue from unfair treatment. It (...) follows that not all inequalities in the distribution of goods are unjust. I use these results to explain how state borders do play a role in determining which inequalities are unjust, since some of these inequalities issue from unfair treatment of citizens by the state. (shrink)

Early modern natural law and the law of nations has been criticised for the Eurocentric character of its conception of law and justice, which has been in turn linked to its role in providing an ideological justification for European imperialism and colonialism. In questioning this account, the present chapter begins by noting that this historical critique presumes that a non-Eurocentric conception of law and justice was in principle available to the early moderns, which they culpably ignored for ideological reasons. If (...) such a non-Eurocentric conception was not available, though, then we will have to acknowledge that the early modern law of nature and nations was actually far more profoundly Eurocentric than even its most strident postcolonial critics have grasped. If the early modern law of nature and nations turns out to be wholly within the horizon of European cultures and designed to address fundamentally European political and religious problems, then its colonial uses might turn out to be both less central and less culpable than is presumed by postcolonial critique. These are the revisionist questions that the chapter explores. (shrink)

Garrett Cullity concedes that saving a drowning child from a shallow pond at little cost to oneself is not actually analogous to giving money to a poverty relief organization like Oxfam. The question then arises whether this objection is fatal to Peters Singer's argument for a duty of assistance or whether it can be saved anyway. Cullity argues that not saving the drowning child and not giving money to organizations like Oxfam are still morally analogous, that is, not giving money (...) to organizations like Oxfam is morally nearly as bad as letting the child drown. I argue that Cullity's two arguments for this conclusion, an argument from "transitivity" and an argument from collective responsibility, fail. (shrink)

Over the years a few authors have argued that Rawls’s ideal theory of justice is useless for the real world. This criticism has been largely ignored by Rawlsians, but in the light of a recent accumulation of such criticisms, some authors (in particular Holly Lawford-Smith, A. John Simmons, Zofia Stemplowska and Laura Valentini) have tried to defend ideal theory. In this article I will recapitulate the precise problem with Rawls’s ideal theory, argue that some of Rawls’s defenders misconceive it, and (...) show that recent attempts to rescue Rawls’s ideal theory from the charge of being useless fail. While there are useful kinds of ideal theory, Rawls’s is not one of them. In addition, Rawls’s very tentative suggestions for some kind of bridge between ideal and non-ideal theory are contradictory insofar as they implicitly presuppose the non-existence of the problem they are meant to solve. Thus, Rawls’s “non-ideal theory” too, is useless, and not so much a theory at all but a set of ad hoc stipulations. Finally, I will show that certain attempts within the global justice debate to use some variation of the original position to directly derive guidelines for the real world are misguided and yield no useful results. (shrink)

Many authors writing about global justice seem to take national responsibility more or less for granted. Most of them, however, offer very little argument for their position. One of the few exceptions is David Miller. He offers two models of collective responsibility: the like-minded group model and the cooperative practice model. While some authors have criticized whether these two models are applicable to nations, as Miller intends, my criticism is more radical: I argue that these two models fail as accounts (...) of collective responsibility as such. This result should not surprise us (liberals): there simply is no such thing as collective responsibility (in a strict sense), there is only individual responsibility. Thus individuals are not automatically responsible for the actions of their groups, nations or states, not even if they do not actively dissociate themselves from those actions. (shrink)

Part 1. FOUNDERS AND FIRSTCOMERS1: David Zimmerman: 'Protests Butter no Parsnips': Lord Beveridge and the Rescue of Refugee Academics from Europe, 1933-19382: William Lanouette: A Narrow Margin of Hope: Leo Szilard in the Founding Days of CARA3: Paul Weindling: From Refugee Assistance to Freedom of Learning: the Strategic Vision of A. V. Hill, 1933-19644: Gustav Born: Refugee Scientists in a New Environment5: Georgina Ferry: Max Perutz and the SPSLPART 2. TESS - THE LINCHPIN6: Paul Broda: Esther Simpson: A Correspondence7: Lewis (...) Elton: Eva and EstherPART 3. ASSOCIATES AND ALLIES8: Gerald Kreft: 'Dedicated to Represent the True Spirit of the German Nation in the World': Philipp Schwartz , Founder of the Notgemeinschaft9: Tibor Frank: Organized Rescue Operations in Europe and the United States, 1933-194510: Susan Cohen: In Defence of Academic Women Refugees: The British Federation of University Women11: Stina Lyon: Karl Mannheim and Viola Klein: Refugee Sociologists in Search of Social Democratic PracticePART 4. REVERSING THE GAZE12: Christian Fleck: Austrian Refugee Social Scientists13: Antoon de Baets: Plutarch's Thesis: The Contribution of Refugee Historians to Historical Writing, 1945-201014: Marina Yu Sorokina: Within Two Tyrannies: The Soviet Academic Refugees of the Second World War15: Antonín Kostlán and Soña Strbáñová: Czech Scholars in Exile, 1948-198916: Shula Marks: 'Bending the rules': South African Refugees in the UK, 1960-198017: Alan Phillips: Refugee Academics from Chile: WUS-SPSL CollaborationLucia Muñoz: Postscript. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans typically argue that the realization of cosmopolitan ideals requires the creation of global political institutions of some kind. While the precise nature of the necessary institutions is widely discussed, the problem of the transition to such an order has received less attention. In this paper, we address what we take to be a crucial aspect of the problem of transition: we argue that it involves a moral coordination problem because there are several morally equivalent paths to reform the existing (...) order, but suitably placed and properly motivated political agents need to converge on a single route for the transition to be successful. It is, however, unclear how such a convergence can take place since the duty to create global institutions does not single out any coordination point. We draw on the so-called theory of hegemonic stability to address this problem and conceptualize what we call the hegemonic transition. From an explanatory point of view, we rely on the theory’s insights to explain how a hegemon may contribute to the creation of a rules-based international order by providing salient coordination points and accordingly, enabling coordination among states. From the normative point of view, we identify necessary conditions for the hegemonic transition to be morally permissible. To the extent that these conditions obtain, other states have pro tanto moral reasons to follow the salient coordination point provided by the leading state. (shrink)

Who should be recognized as a refugee? This article seeks to uncover the normative arguments at the core of legal and philosophical conceptions of refugeehood. It identifies three analytically distinct approaches grounding the right to refugee status and argues that all three are normatively inadequate. Refugee status should neither be grounded in individual persecution for specific reasons (classical approach) nor in individual persecution for any discriminatory reasons (human rights approach). It should also not be based solely on harm (humanitarian approach). (...) Rather, this article argues, it should be based on political oppression – on persons lacking public autonomy, formally expressed as a lack of legal–political status. The normative foundation for a claim to refugee status lies in the inability of a person to control, amend and seek recourse to the specific situation she faces. It lies in the lack of public autonomy expressed as a lack of legal–political rights. What matters for a claim to refugee status is thus the legal–political disenfranchisement of a person, ultimately leaving her with no recourse to the particular situation she faces other than flight. Refugees, then, are not only those who fear harm or persecution, but those who are politically oppressed. (shrink)

This paper discusses two distinct questions of distributive justice raised by climate change. Stated very roughly, one question concerns how much protection is owed to the potential victims of climate change (the Just Target Question), and the second concerns how the burdens (and benefits) involved in preventing dangerous climate change should be distributed (the Just Burden Question). In Section II, I focus on the first of these questions, the Just Target Question. The rest of the paper examines the second question, (...) the Just Burden Question. To answer this question, I argue, it is necessary to address two important methodological questions (one concerning the choice between what I term Integrationism and Isolationism and the other concerning the choice between what I term Holism and Atomism). Sections III-V, thus, set out and explore these two methodological issues. Having done so, the paper then turns from methodological issues to substantive analysis, and in Section VI it examines three principles of distributive justice that, it has been suggested, should determine how the burden of addressing dangerous climatic changes should be distributed (the Polluter Pays Principle, the Ability to Pay Principle and the Beneficiary Pays Principle). (shrink)

Book chapter about migration and poverty in Handbuch Philosophie und Armut [Companion to Philosophy and Poverty].

In this article, I set out to prove that if, by following this basic intuition, we correctly understand human nature and organize our world according to the principle of cooperation, we can arrive at a world of social harmony. The current disharmony in the world, which can be observed especially in the field of politics and economics, is largely related to the erroneous modern Western philosophical assertions identifying the human being with an individual moved by desires and the will to (...) power, and the phenomenon of life with an endless conflict. These misconceptions have enormous practical implications on the picture of today’s world. I want to show that cooperation is an integral part of human nature, and that the society organized according to the requirements of our nature can become a truly harmonious and happy society. (shrink)

Shortened version of an article that first appeared in Philosophical Papers (2017).

Political theorists have written a great deal about the ethics of “intervention,” defined as states using coercion or force to interfere in foreign societies’ politics. But this work leaves much of global politics un-analyzed—both because non-state actors play an increasingly significant role in it and because its practitioners use many tactics besides force and coercion.We need an ethics of foreign influence to help us navigate the global political arena in all its complexity. Here, I begin to develop a unified theory (...) of the ethics of deliberate attempts to promote justice in foreign societies, whether undertaken by state or non-state actors, and whatever tactics they employ. I identify two important but under-appreciated dimensions along which instances of foreign influence can differ and argue that, once we appreciate the full range of forms foreign influence can take, we’ll see it’s often immune to the common moral objections against intervention. (shrink)

The pro tanto duty not to harm is arguably the most widely accepted basis for moral demand. However, in the case of global poverty, even if we accept that individual members of wealthier nations are responsible for harming the global poor (through their constitution of, or participation in or with, global institutions that harm), it remains difficult to claim that individuals violate a negative duty in doing so. For an agent to hold a duty, that duty must be at least (...) (a) recognizable to a reasonably competent observer, and (b) fulfillable, two criteria which do not appear to be met. This paper argues that we have misunderstood the way in which the global community harms the global poor. As a result, there are a range of acts—the provision of financial aid—which the global community largely fails to undertake and which form a part of violating the negative duty not to harm. In relation to these global acts, it is straightforward for individuals both to recognize what they would need to do to avoid participating in the harm of global poverty and to achieve that avoidance: individuals simply need to provide financial aid. As such, assuming that individuals are culpable for the harms committed by intersecting global institutions, then their participation in harm also violates a negative duty not to inflict such harm. This opens up a further remedial duty to provide financial aid for past harms committed. (shrink)

The open borders view is frequently dismissed for making infeasible demands. This is a potent strategy. Unlike normative arguments regarding open borders, which tend to be relatively intractable, the charge of infeasibility is supposed to operate as what we call a "normative argument-stopper." Nonetheless, we argue that the strategy fails. Bringing about open borders is perfectly feasible on the most plausible account of feasibility. We consider and reject what we take to be the only three credible ways to save the (...) charge of infeasibility: by proposing an alternative account of feasibility; by proposing an alternative, more circumscribed interpretation of the subject-matter of feasibility claims; and by proposing a more expansive account of the addressees of the demand for open borders. The first fails to vindicate the claim that infeasibility is a normative argument-stopper. The second does not provide an argument against open borders at all. The third underestimates the power of at least some non-state actors. We conclude by drawing some lessons for the open borders view and the use of feasibility in politics more generally. (shrink)