Duties Of Justice Research Articles

A Liberal Defence of (Some) Duties to Compatriots

abstractThis paper asks whether we can defend associative duties to our compatriots that are grounded solely in the relationship of liberal co‐citizenship. The sort of duties that are especially salient to this relationship are duties of justice, duties to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship, and a duty to favour the interests of compatriots over those of foreigners. Critics have argued that the liberal conception of citizenship is too insubstantial to sustain these duties — indeed, that it gives us little reason to treat compatriots any differently from how we treat foreigners, with all the practical consequences that this would entail. I suggest that on a specific conception of liberal citizenship we can, in fact, defend associative duties, but that these extend only to the duty to protect and improve the institutions that constitute that relationship. Duties of justice and favouritism, I maintain, cannot be particularised to one's compatriots.

Saving the Polar Bear, Saving the World: Can the Capabilities Approach do Justice to Humans, Animals and Ecosystems?

Martha Nussbaum has expanded the capabilities approach to defend positive duties of justice to individuals who fall below Rawls’ standard for fully cooperating members of society, including sentient nonhuman animals. Building on this, David Schlosberg has defended the extension of capabilities justice not only to individual animals but also to entire species and ecosystems. This is an attractive vision: a happy marriage of social, environmental and ecological justice, which also respects the claims of individual animals. This paper asks whether it is one that the capabilities approach can really deliver. Serious obstacles are highlighted. The potential for conflict between the capability-based entitlements of humans and those of nonhuman animals or ‘nature’ is noted, but it is argued that this does not constitute a decisive objection to the expanded capabilities approach. However, intra-nature conflicts are so widespread as to do so: the situation is outside the circumstances of justice as they are standardly understood. Schlosberg attempts to reconcile such conflicts by re-examining what it means to flourish as a sentient nonhuman animal. This fails, because of the distinction between flourishing as a species, which often requires predation, and flourishing as an individual, which is as frequently incompatible with it. Finally, the paper considers how a capabilities theorist might move beyond such conflicts, identifying two possible strategies (which are not themselves unproblematic) for reconciling the demands of humans, animals and ecosystems.

A Rawlsian Dual Duty of Assistance

This paper seeks to specify the requirements that follow from the Rawlsian duty of assistance. In order to determine them, the hypothesis I will defend is that this duty is a specification of the natural duty of justice. This interpretation has several advantages: a) It facilitates the task of appreciating how one of the most important parts of the Rawlsian conception of international justice presented inThe Law of Peoplesis connected with the natural duty of justice presented inA Theory of Justice. b) It enables one to appreciate a new requirement of the duty of justice overlooked by Rawls: the duty of contributing to maintaining well-ordered foreign institutions. c) This new requirement enables one to appreciate the critical potential of justice as fairness in relation to one of the most pressing problems nowadays: the foreign debt of developing countries.

Humanitarian NGOs' Duties of Justice

Humanitarian NGOs' Duties of Justice

DUTIES OF JUSTICE TO CITIZENS WITH COGNITIVE DISABILITIES

Abstract: Many social practices treat citizens with cognitive disabilities differently from their nondisabled peers. Does John Rawls's theory of justice imply that we have different duties of justice to citizens whenever they are labeled with cognitive disabilities? Some theorists have claimed that the needs of the cognitively disabled do not raise issues of justice for Rawls. I claim that it is premature to reject Rawlsian contractualism. Rawlsians should regard all citizens as moral persons provided they have the potential for developing the two moral powers. I claim that every citizen requires specific Enabling Conditions to develop and exercise the two moral powers. Structuring basic social institutions to deny some citizens the Enabling Conditions is unjust because it blocks their developmental pathways toward becoming fully cooperating members of society. Hence, we have a duty of justice to provide citizens labeled with cognitive disabilities with the Enabling Conditions they require until they become fully cooperating members of society.

Against Body Exceptionalism: A Reply to Eyal

It is hard to do justice, in a short reply, to Eyal's excellent review. Accordingly, I will focus on what I take to be its central claim – namely that I fail to give proper consideration to the extent to which the forced extraction of (live) body parts undermines individuals' opportunities for self-respect. According to Eyal, ‘body exceptionalism’ (the view that body parts, unlike material resources, are not appropriate subject matter for duties of justice) can be defended on the following grounds: ‘People usually see trespass into a person and into objects they associate with a person – especially into a person's body – as utterly disrespectful towards that person and her autonomy’ (pp. 236–7). And later: ‘Whether or not organ confiscation is truly disrespectful . . . its widespread and intractable perception as a humiliating violation counts heavily against it, because it can thwart opportunities for self-respect’ (p. 238).

Public Health and the Rights of States

When exercising their public health powers, states claim various rights against their subjects and aliens. The paper considers whether public health considerations can help justify some of these rights, and explores some constraints on the justificatory force of public health considerations. I outline two arguments about the moral grounds for states’ rights with regard to public health. The principle of fairness emphasizes that those who benefit from public health measures ought to contribute their fair share in upholding them. Alternatively, states’ rights might be justified by a natural duty of justice to uphold and not to obstruct institutions implementing public health policies. I indicate some reasons for preferring the latter justification. I further argue that the assignment of some rights to states via public health-based justification is undermined on several counts. Domestic political institutions cannot effectively perform some of their functions in protecting public health. Furthermore, transborder public health threats pose collective action problems at the global level. Finally, concerns about human rights work against the assignment of some rights to states. I conclude by arguing that these concerns call for global coordination, and that some rights claimed by states ought instead to be assigned to global institutions.

Poverty, Justice, and Western Political Thought (review)

Reviewed by: Poverty, Justice, and Western Political Thought Christopher Tollefsen Sharon K. Vaughan. Poverty, Justice, and Western Political Thought. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Pp. ix + 221. Cloth, $75.00 This book is an important effort to fill a notable void in moral and political philosophy, for there has been, according to Sharon K. Vaughan, “no formal study of the treatment of poverty in Western political thought” (1). Vaughan attempts to rectify this with a survey of the views of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Mill, de Tocqueville, Hegel, Marx, Rawls, and Nozick on the subject of poverty, the poor, the redistribution of wealth, and justice. Her effort is valuable, even if more work remains to be done. The time is well chosen for Vaughan’s undertaking, both because of the resurgence of political philosophy in the past forty years and also because of a more recent interest in the relationship between the empirical sciences and philosophy. An account of poverty, and a philosophical theory of how to respond to poverty, are clearly of importance to the justice project, central to contemporary political philosophy; but it is unlikely to be carried out well without attention to empirical details concerning the sources of poverty, the demographics of the poor, analyses of programs that have, and have not, been effectively used in the past, and the like. As Daniel Shapiro has recently shown in Is the Welfare State Justified? (Cambridge 2007), unexpected conclusions can be drawn when empirical evidence is brought to bear on orthodox liberal premises. Vaughan’s book is helpful in drawing attention to the connection between theorizing about poverty and the wider ethical, political, and even metaphysical views of the authors she discusses. Similar attention could profitably be paid to the relationship between these thinkers’ views on education and ethics, politics, and metaphysics, for in many cases, the relationships are quite similar to those limned by Vaughan. Plato, Locke, Rousseau, and Mill, for example, have political concerns that have implications for poverty and education. But her book leaves one wanting to see her more directly take up the question of poverty in relation to justice, something she does not really do. Nor does she draw many bold conclusions from her study; rather, she is content to provide a fairly detailed exposition of each thinker’s work insofar as it addressed the question of poverty. Vaughan’s attention to the texts is both a strength and a weakness. A glance at the footnotes provides much assistance to anyone wanting to find out, for example, where exactly in the Politics Aristotle discusses poverty. At the same time, the book does not go very deeply into any sustained exegetical controversies; thus, it reads like a narrowly-focused general [End Page 151] history of philosophy, which makes few positive contributions either to historical studies or to constructive philosophy. Moreover, Vaughan occasionally misses the nuances of a thinker’s work; thus, she finds no irony in Plato’s treatment of Cephalus at the beginning of the Republic and rather blandly implies that Plato endorses Cephalus’s claim that “wealth allows one to choose more easily not to cheat or to deceive someone. . . . ” (12). I would note two further, and not unrelated, areas in which Vaughan’s work could, I believe, be stronger. First, she pays no sustained attention to medieval Christian thinkers. But an investigation of Aquinas’s views on property, the obligation of almsgiving, and the duties of those in public authority to provide the “necessaries of life” (Summa Theologica IIa–IIae, q. 77, a. 4, c) for their citizens would have provided helpful background to later thinkers like Locke and would have helped address a misunderstanding of Aquinas as one concerned only with the virtue of beneficence, rather than the duty of justice, where the poor are concerned. Second, two distinctions are important throughout Vaughan’s work. The first is a distinction between a state concern for the poor for their own sake—call this a welfarist concern for the poor—and a state concern for the poor insofar as poverty is a source of political instability. The second is a distinction between a moral concern for the poor and a...

Reasonable partiality for compatriots and the global responsibility gap

According to David Miller, duties of domestic national and global justice are of equal importance, given that nationhood is both intrinsically valuable and not inherently an unjust way of excluding outsiders. The consequence of this ‘split‐level’ view is that it may be reasonable to prioritize domestic justice in some cases, while letting demands of global justice take precedence in others, depending on a weighting model which seeks to account for the relative urgency of domestic and global claims and the extent to which agents are more closely attached to compatriots than to outsiders. In this chapter, I argue against this weighting model on grounds of internal coherence with the theory set out in National responsibility and global justice (NRGJ). I first inquire into the conditions under which justice at home conflicts with justice in the world at large, according to Miller’s main principle of global justice – respect for basic human rights. I then show that on Miller’s own understanding of the various duties of global and domestic justice, cases of conflict rarely arise, and that when they do, there is a powerful argument for prioritizing global duties on grounds of urgency, which contradicts the reasoning of the weighting model. Finally, I address a problem arising from Miller’s basic assumption that under‐fulfillment of basic human rights in poor countries only generates claims of global justice to which rich nations are under a duty to respond, following the acceptance of a scheme of remedial responsibilities to provide aid by each of these nations. The normative structure of the split‐level view set out in NRGJ needs to be clarified with respect to the key question of whether nations can be held to be under a duty of justice to bring such a scheme into existence in the first place.

Global justice as justice for a world of largely independent nations? From dualism to a multi‐level ethical position

Can global justice simply be seen as social justice writ large? According to Miller it cannot. Seen from the viewpoint of justice there are fundamental differences between the national and international sphere. Just like Nagel he strongly rejects monism. Yet unlike Nagel, Miller does not confine duties of justice to sovereign states. Different forms of human association require different principles of justice. Strangely enough, however, Miller does not replace Nagel’s dualism with a multi‐level ethical position, but with a split‐level one. In this article we argue that – contrary to Miller’s own claims – his contextualist view of justice contains the necessary tools for accepting the importance of multiple contexts of justice beyond the nation‐state. Even if one is committed to seeing nation‐states as the privileged sites of social justice, there is no reason not to recognize substantial amounts of social justice above the nation‐state level.

World Poverty as a Problem of Justice? A Critical Comparison of Three Approaches

With regard to the problem of world poverty, libertarian theories of corrective justice emphasize negative duties and the idea of responsibility whereas utilitarian theories of help concentrate on positive duties based on the capacity of the helper. Thomas Pogge has developed a revised model of compensation that entails positive obligations that are generated by negative duties. He intends to show that the affluent are violating their negative duties to ensure that their conduct will not harm others: They are contributing to and profiting from an unjust global order. But the claim that negative duty generated positive obligations are more acceptable than positive duties is contestable. I examine whether Henry Shue’s model that is integrating negative duties and positive duties is more convincing concerning the foundation of positive duties to protect others. I defend the idea that there are positive duties of justice. This approach can integrate an allocation of positive duties via responsibility and maintain the advantage of an independent foundation of positive duties.

Waldron's Defence of the Natural Duty of Justice Revisited

Three elements of Waldron’s defense of the natural duty of justice account are considered: the understanding of the natural duty of justice, the conceptualization of the special allegiance objection, and the argument for the distinction between the insiders and outsiders. All three are found problematic. I argue that Waldron conflates the natural duty of justice with the duty not to harm. Further, I contend that the special allegiance objection is not really dealt with. Finally, I maintain that Waldron’s distinction between the insiders and outsiders fails if the natural duty of justice account is not supplemented with fairness theory.

Practical Nationalism and Global Duties of Justice

The interrelated causes and consequences of enviromnental degradation, poverty, and war are creating a dangerous snowball effect that poses a real threat to people in every nation. While moral arguments for cosmopolitanism may be subject to nationalist objections, the practical argument becomes more convincing as the long-term consequences of global injustice unfold. Contemporary conditions demand a critical re-examination of what is at stake in the question of global justice: when understood as highly influential to all national spheres, the global sphere of justice may turn out to be just as relevant to nationalists as it is to cosmopolitans. Given the pressing nature of the practical demands posed by poverty, war, and enviromnental destruction, it may well be in the best interest of everyone’s co-nationals to prioritise global duties of justice, at least for the time being.

Beneficence and distributive justice in a globalising world

This paper argues that distributive justice requires a higher degree of enforceability and responsibility than beneficence and that therefore the current world order gives us strong reasons to recognise a global duty of justice to help the poor satisfy their basic needs. It proceeds in three steps. The first part considers the conceptual distinction between duties of justice and duties of beneficence. The second part examines the role that international institutions might play in activating duties of justice, by focusing on two dichotomies that are often used in order to distinguish between beneficence and justice, namely the imperfection/perfection dichotomy and the non-enforceability/enforceability dichotomy. In this respect, it is argued that perfection and enforceability of duties are necessary but not sufficient conditions for distributive duties to be conceived as duties of distributive justice. Therefore, the third part proposes an additional dichotomy focusing on the distinct moral reasons that underlie duties of beneficence and duties of distributive justice, namely the corrective/causal responsibility dichotomy.

Basic Positive Duties of Justice and Narveson's Libertarian Challenge

Are positive duties to help others in need mere informal duties of virtue or can they also be enforceable duties of justice? In this paper I defend the claim that some positive duties (which I call basic positive duties) can be duties of justice against one of the most important principled objections to it. This is the libertarian challenge, according to which only negative duties to avoid harming others can be duties of justice, whereas positive duties (basic or nonbasic) must be seen, at best, as informal moral requirements or recommendations. I focus on the contractarian version of the libertarian challenge as recently presented by Jan Narveson. I claim that Narveson's contractarian construal of libertarianism is not only intuitively weak, but is also subject to decisive internal problems. I argue, in particular, that it does not provide a clear rationale for distinguishing between informal duties of virtue and enforceable duties of justice, that it can neither successfully justify libertarianism's protection of negative rights nor its denial of positive ones, and that it fails to undermine the claim that basic positive duties are duties of global justice.

What We Deserve, and how We Reciprocate

Samuel Scheffler says, “none of the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism assigns a significant role to desert at the level of fundamental principle.” To the extent that this is true, the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism are mistaken. In particular, there is an aspect of what we do to make ourselves deserving that, although it has not been discussed in the literature, plays a central role in everyday moral life, and for good reason. As with desert, reciprocity inspires skepticism. What Allen Buchanan calls justice as reciprocity implies that duties of justice obtain only among those who can do each other favors. So characterized, justice as reciprocity is at best only a part of justice – a part that is silent on duties between people who have no favors to offer each other. Still, the more modest root idea of reciprocity – the idea that returning favors is at very least a good thing – remains compelling. What can we say on behalf of this root idea? This article is part of a larger work on the elements of justice. Both parts of it begin with and build on James Rachels’ seminal paper “What People Deserve.”

Do Patriotic Ties Limit Global Justice Duties?

Do Patriotic Ties Limit Global Justice Duties?

Economic Migration and Justice

Our main thesis is that the U.S. has a duty of justice to adopt an open-border policy with regard to economic migrants because it is significantly responsible for the unjust social and economic conditions that bring such migrants to its borders. From this perspective, President Bush's recent guest worker proposal is morally objectionable because it is designed more to serve U.S. business interests than the interests of the migrants. We address three objections to opening borders: it will worsen the economic condition especially of low-skilled native workers; it will harm developing countries by increasing the so<alled brain drain; and it is preferable to discharge our responsibility to the global poor by increasing development assistance instead of adopting an open-border policy.

The Duty to Eradicate Global Poverty: Positive or Negative?

In World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge argues that the “global rich” have a duty to eradicate severe poverty in the world. The novelty of Pogge’s approach is to present this demand as stemming from basic commands which are negative rather than positive in nature: the global rich have an obligation to eradicate the radical poverty of the “global poor” not because of a norm of beneficence asking them to help those in need when they can at little cost to themselves, but because of their having violated a principle of justice not to unduly harm others by imposing on them a coercive global order that makes their access to the objects of their human right to subsistence insecure. In this paper, I claim that although Pogge is right in arguing that negative duties are crucial in an account of global justice, he is wrong in saying that they are the only ones that are crucial. Harming the global poor by causing their poverty provides a sufficient but not a necessary condition for the global rich to have a duty of justice to assist them. After engaging in a critical analysis of Pogge’s argument, I conclude by suggesting the need for a robust conception of cosmopolitan solidarity that includes positive duties of assistance which are not mere duties of charity, but enforceable ones of justice.

Multiple Principles of Political Obligation

Scholars who doubt the existence of general political obligations typically criticize and reject theories of obligation based on individual moral principles, for example, consent, fairness, or a natural duty of justice. Astronger position can result fromcombining different principles in a single theory. I develop a multiprinciple theory of political obligation, based on the principle of fairness, a natural duty of justice, and what I call the “common good” principle. The three principles interact in three main ways: “cumulation,” combining the separate state services that different principles cover; “mutual support,” combining the force of different principles in regard to the same state services; and simple overlap. The resulting theory is able to satisfy the main conditions for an adequate theory of obligation: demonstrating that all or nearly all inhabitants of society have moral requirements to obey the law, and that these extend to the full range of state services.