Global justice and transnational civil disobedience

Abstract

Almost all accounts of global justice recognise that the world, as it is, is unjust, and that something ought to be done about this. But what? In this paper, I argue that wealthy individuals have a duty grounded in the natural duty of justice to engage in civil disobedience against the currently unjust global order with the aim of pressuring for institutional reform. In particular, I argue that those who subscribe to the two main views on global justice—cosmopolitanism and statism—can agree that the conditions which give rise to the duty to engage in civil disobedience obtain in global society today. I then explain why I focus on transnational civil disobedience, argue that only the wealthy have the duty to engage in it, and give an example of how this duty has been discharged in the real world.