The Idea of Public Justification in Rawls’s Law of Peoples

Abstract

The article examines Rawls’s Law of Peoples as an attemptto extend the conception of public justification originallydeveloped in Political Liberalism to the internationaldomain. After briefly sketching the main elements of Rawls’sconception of public justification, the article examineshow this is developed in Law of Peoples, pointingout the main differences with the domestic case. The articlethen tries to show that Rawls’s justificatory strategy containsa number of inconsistencies which undermine the persuasivenessof the conception of international justice he advocates. Thisin turn can be traced back to the failure fully to addressthe “constituency problem” facing theories ofpublic justification.