Duties Of Justice Research Articles

Unethical Consumption and Obligations to Signal

There are many different ways to try to bring about an end to the harms involved in the production of consumer goods. In this article I will start at the bottom, with the individual whose ordinary choices about how to travel, what to eat, what to wear, where to shop, and which policies to support all cause her to confront the possibility of involvement in these harms to the environment, nonhuman animals, and persons.Having dismissed the claim that an individual has a straightforward duty of justice not to consume unethically produced goods, in the second section I map out a few different approaches, all of which I take to be promising avenues for generating duties in individuals to consume ethically. I argue that the last approach is the most promising and spend the third section of this article developing it. Specifically, I argue that as a first step in collectivizing to act against unjust global labor practices, an individual ought to signal to others her commitments to ethical consumption. In section four I ask whether some signals are too cheap to function as a step toward collectivization, and defend the deliberate consumption of only ethically produced goods as a moderately costly and therefore reliable signal. In the last section I consider a challenge to the proposal in terms of whether it imposes unacceptable costs on consumers.

Global justice and transnational civil disobedience

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.

Freedom beyond the threshold: self-determination, sovereignty, and global justice

In current debates about global justice, statist and nationalist theories appeal to the right to self-determination in argument against egalitarianism beyond borders, and in general as a reason for caution about substantive international duties of justice, lest the exercise of self-determination would be too tightly constrained. Has self-determination—an important heritage of decolonization—no longer a role to play in the argument against international inequality and disempowerment? In this article, I examine a dominant interpretation of self-determination in the global justice debate, as defended prominently by John Rawls and David Miller and find it wanting. Specifically, two challenges are raised: at the conceptual level this interpretation leaves unclarified the distinction and relationship between sovereignty and self-determination; at the normative level, this interpretation adopts a sufficiency view of international distributive justice that neglects that problem of relative extents and measures of self-determination, beyond the threshold. While the article's argument is mainly of a critical scope, it is suggested that a more robust theoretical account is required of the content of the right of self-determination, and in particular of the freedoms that the right confers to the right-holders in the socioeconomic domains and their extents.

Global Labor Rights as Duties of Justice

The paper asks whether global labor rights should be regarded as a duty of justice or, instead, as a moral duty of humanitarian assistance. The main distinction between the two types of duties lies in the presumption that duties of justice, unlike moral duties of humanitarian assistance, require the intervention of a third party and should therefore be enforced by public institutions. The paper examines this question through the prisms of practice-dependence theory. It presents a critical interpretation of the social practice of labor, which is comprised of the legal rules and regulations that govern labor relations as they have developed over the past two centuries. The paper demonstrates the growing inadequacy of existing national and international regulations and enforcement mechanisms to address violations of labor rights in global production chains in the current conditions of economic globalization. The authors ultimately suggest that the duty to establish new legal and institutional tools to regulate working conditions within complex transnational chains of production is a matter of justice. They also propose guidelines for designing necessary new rules and institutions in the global practice of labor.

Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World by John Broome (review)

Reviewed by: Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World by John Broome Madison Powers Review: John Broome, Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, W. W. Norton and Co., 2012 John Broome’s Climate Matters is a timely, elegant, and accessible book. His book is deliberately interdisciplinary, as is much of his work in moral philosophy more generally. The discussion of what should be done, and by whom, to prevent the adverse effects of climate change is informed by many years of philosophical engagement with economic theory, especially problems arising in the conceptualization and technical implementation of cost-benefit analysis. The central arguments in the book are informed as well by a longstanding engagement with climate change science. Broome brings to bear a perspective forged in the work of his role as a lead author—and occasional critic—of the report of Working Group III of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. At the heart of the book is a somewhat unconventional thesis regarding the way we should view the moral division of labor between nation-states and individuals in mitigating the serious harm produced by climate change. Roughly, Broome’s thesis is that nation-states primarily have impersonal duties of beneficence—duties to bring about good consequences—while individuals have duties of justice, which on Broome’s account are largely negative duties, or duties not to cause severe, avoidable harm to specific, identifiable others. There are, of course, critics who deny that the distinction between the domain of justice and the domain of beneficence is as conceptually sharp or as normatively significant as often supposed. Indeed, Broome concedes some lack of sharpness but asserts that the normative difference is real (50). In particular, Broome’s claim is that “governments have a stronger moral mandate to make things better,” especially for their own citizens (188), but such duties are impersonal, or ones that are not owed to particular people (530). By contrast, the “key defining feature” of duties of justice is that they are owed to particular people who have rights not to be harmed (52). Many of Broome’s claims regarding the distinction between beneficence and justice are not developed in much philosophical detail even though it [End Page E-1] is the centerpiece of the book. Discussions of rights, in particular, appear on only three pages, according to the index. The absence of more detail regarding rights is curious in light of two facts. First, a great deal of the existing literature discussing the ethics of climate change relies heavily upon human rights theory. Many of the most well-known papers by Simon Caney and Henry Shue, for example, treat the predictable harms of climate change as violations of human rights. Broome’s own catalogue of the main features of the harms of climate change, which he takes to be breaches of duties of justice, mirror in much detail the catalogues that human rights theorists generate. The harms caused are the result of what we do; the harms are serious; they are not accidental; and they are normally for the sake of our own benefit (55–57). Second, Broome’s book is published under the imprint of the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series. The aim of the series is to expand the traditional conversation surrounding human rights to include topics less widely addressed in that framework. However, on Broome’s account, because matters of justice and human rights are primarily matters of individual moral duty, and duties of beneficence are primarily duties of governments, nearly half of the book (chapters 7–10) is devoted to various problems associated with governmental duties of beneficence. Matters of justice and human rights necessarily get far less attention than beneficence. More precisely, some form of cost-benefit analysis is assumed to be both the most appropriate framework for understanding the nature of governmental duties of beneficence, and Broome explores a number of problems that reveal some significant moral limits on their use. Problems of trade-offs among future and present generations, as well as more general problems of trade-offs among the lives and overall health prospects of domestic and global population sub-groups are central concerns...

Beneficence, Justice, and Health Care

This paper argues that societal duties of health promotion are underwritten (at least in large part) by a principle of beneficence. Further, this principle generates duties of justice that correlate with rights, not merely "imperfect" duties of charity or generosity. To support this argument, I draw on a useful distinction from bioethics and on a somewhat neglected approach to social obligation from political philosophy. The distinction is that between general and specific beneficence; and the approach from political philosophy has at times been called equality of concern. After clarifying the distinction and setting out the basis of the equality of concern view, I argue that the result is a justice-based principle of "specific" beneficence that should be reflected in a society's health policy. I then draw on this account to criticize, refine, and extend some prominent health care policy proposals from the bioethics literature.

Justice and Charity: Positive duties and the right of necessity in Pablo Gilabert

This article considers Pablo Gilabert’s attempt to defend against libertarian critics his ambitious argument for basic positive duties of justice to the world’s destitute. The article notes that Gilabert’s argument – and particularly the vocabulary of perfect and imperfect duties that he adopts – has firm roots in the modern natural rights tradition. The article goes on to suggest, however, that Gilabert employs the phrase ‘imperfect duties’ in a manner that is in some tension with the tradition from which it is derived. Indeed, Gilabert’s novel deployment of the phrase contains a number of radical possibilities that are not pursued in his text. The article suggests that Gilabert would do better to break more decisively from a tradition that insists on the essential distinction between justice and charity.

Special Relationships, Motivation and the Pursuit of Global Egalitarianism

One of the most significant challenges facing global egalitarian theorists is the motivational gap: there is a noted gap between the duties imposed by a global commitment to the equal moral worth of all people and the willingness of the wealthy to carry out these duties. For Pablo Gilabert, the apparent absence of motivation to act justly on a global scale presses us to consider the importance of feasibility in developing a persuasive account of global justice, part of which requires being attentive to what motivates us to act in support of global egalitarianism. In this article, I am critical of Gilabert’s account of the role that relationships between individuals play in conceiving our global justice duties. I begin with an account of some confusion in Gilabert’s account of the actual costs likely to be imposed on citizens of wealthy states as a result of the duties he demands of us and why it is important to resolve that confusion. I will then consider, and critique, Gilabert’s account of special responsibilities. I shall argue that, fundamentally, there is an ineliminable tension between the special responsibilities individuals legitimately possess and the duties they have to eradicate global poverty.

Coping with Climate Change: What Justice Demands of Surfers, Mormons, and the Rest of us

Henry Shue has led the charge among moral philosophers in arguing that harms stemming from anthropogenic climate change constitute violations of basic rights and are therefore prohibited by duties of justice. Because frameworks such as Shue's argue that duties of justice are at stake, one could object that the special urgency of those duties threatens to overrun the normatively protected space in which an agent makes her life her own. We argue that an alternative conception of how moral reasons combine to produce duties is required to respond to the demandingness objection, providing normatively protected space to pursue one's projects while yielding numerous strict obligations of justice.

Contemporary Cosmopolitanism: Some Current Issues

AbstractIn this article, we survey some current debates among cosmopolitans and their critics. We begin by surveying some distinctions typically drawn among kinds of cosmopolitanisms, before canvassing some of the diverse varieties of cosmopolitan justice, exploring positions on the content of cosmopolitan duties of justice, and a prominent debate between cosmopolitans and defenders of statist accounts of global justice. We then explore some common concerns about cosmopolitanism – such as whether cosmopolitan commitments are necessarily in tension with other affiliations people typically have and how we should deal with issues concerning a perceived lack of authority in the global domain – and whether these can be addressed. We also look briefly at how the concern with feasibility has led some to take up the challenge of devising public policy that is cosmopolitan in outlook, before offering some concluding remarks on future directions in these debates.

Primerjava zagovora živali v Plutarhovi razpravi O uživanju mesa in v Shelleyjevem Zagovoru naravne prehrane

Plutarhovi teksti o živalih iz njegovega zgodnjega obdobja (Ali so pametnejše kopenske ali morske živali, Živali imajo razum, O uživanju mesa) predstavljajo prvo in najodločnejšo obrambo kapacitet in moralnega statusa živali, usmerjeno proti stoiški poziciji, da so vsa in zgolj človeška bitja člani sfere pravičnosti in da živali obstajajo zgolj za zadovoljevanje človeških želja. Plutarh kritizira stoiški vidik instrumentalne vrednosti živali in trdi, da imamo ljudje do živali dolžnosti pravičnosti. V razpravi O uživanju mesa opredeli uporabo živali za prehrano kot očitno nepravičnost, na osnovi argumenta o izkustvenih zmožnostih živali. Razprava je navdihnila angleškega romantičnega pesnika Percyja Shelleyja, da je napisal esej Zagovor naravne prehrane (1813). Shelley Plutarhov etični argument nadomesti s t. i. »lifestyle« argumentom, ki podpira končno izpeljavo liberalnega individuuma, ki se vzpostavlja v razmerju do življenjskega sloga kot samozadostne politike.

Canine Justice: An Associative Account

A prominent view in contemporary political theory, the ‘associative view’, says that duties of justice are triggered by particular cooperative relations between morally significant agents, and that ‘therefore’ principles of justice apply only among fellow citizens. This view has been challenged by advocates of global justice, who point to the existence of a worldwide cooperative network to which principles of justice apply. Call this the challenge from geographical extension. In this article, I pose a structurally similar challenge to the associative view: the challenge from species extension. This says that the existing network of cooperation extends beyond the human species, to encompass some non-human animals, particularly domesticated dogs. In light of this, if one believes that (1) certain non-human animals are morally significant (i.e. objects of moral concern), and that (2) justice applies to fellow cooperators, one should also hold that domesticated dogs are owed justice in much the same way that our human fellow citizens are. I conclude by considering the implications of this argument for the associative view, and animal rights theory.

Political Self-Determination and Global Egalitarianism

Proponents of global egalitarian justice often argue that their positions are compatible with the principle of self-determination. At the same time, prominent argu ments in favor of global egalitarianism object to one central component of the principle: namely, that the borders of states (or other political units) are normatively significant for the allocation of rights and duties; that duties of justice and democratic rights should stop or change at borders. In this article, I propose an argument in defense of the normative significance of territorial boundaries that draws on a political interpretation of the princi ple of self-determination. The political interpretation is distinct from the two major ap proaches to self-determination: the national and the democratic. It makes a twofold con tribution to the debates about global justice and democracy; while it (a) challenges the position that political memberships and political borders are morally arbitrary; it (b) helps define the realm of permissible autonomy for self-governing political units, which does not ignore duties to nonmembers and outsiders.

Global Justice: Between Leviathan and Cosmopolis

Abstract A comprehensive ideal of global justice is not yet theoretically justifiable: nonetheless, it does not deserve the scepticism :(commonly expressed by) many statists express towards it. To create a kind of continuity between global justice –‘Cosmopolis’– and interstate justice –‘Leviathan’– a third, ‘Liberal’ option is proposed. The statist argument is presented through a discussion of Thomas Nagel’s position on global justice. The cosmopolitan argument is presented through a discussion of Amartya Sen’s overall vision of justice. The liberal view, modeled on Rawls’ political philosophy, “proposes” that the right cannot consist in a mere realization of the good. Liberals that respect the ‘priority of right’ believe that morality has to be different from politics. By bypassing institutionalism through moralism, cosmopolitans contradict the priority of the right. Contrary to cosmopolitans, the author maintains that the only moral source of global justice compatible with the priority of the right consists in a duty to protect life in case of ‘urgency’. This duty is not purely humanitarian – as statists would have it – and captures the ethical appeal of cosmopolitanism. Policy Implications • The core problem of global justice is the lack of basic rights to security and subsistence. As such, obligations derived from the duty of justice based on urgency are binding. • The duty of justice can be interpreted through the positions of statism or cosmopolitanism. • The distinction between cosmopolitanism and statism is not only interesting from the point of view of political philosophy but also has a significant tradition within the context of international law and the interpretation of its main sources. While the UN Charter has a generally statist approach, (starting with) Article 2 (that strongly defends) the territorial integrity of states is strongly depended the discipline compromising humanitarian law as introduced in and human rights is largely inspired by cosmopolitanism. • Taking the middle ground between statism and cosmopolitanism into account, based on Rawls’ central idea of the ‘priority of right’, global politics requires more demanding norms than those dictated by humanitarianism. However, global politics of a less demanding type than the ones recommended by a cosmopolitan egalitarian approach.

Immigration restrictions in the real world

In Do Duties to Outsiders Entail Open Borders? Shelley Wilcox argues that, even if we adopt relational rather than luck egalitarianism, egalitarian duties of justice may require countries like the United States to open their borders to at least some foreigners. In particular, Wilcox details the negative effects the Border Industrialization Program (BIP) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have had on Mexican maquiladora workers and corn farmers, among others. Given these harms, Wilcox argues that Americans have duties to these disadvantaged Mexicans, duties that can be satisfactorily discharged only through allowing open immigration over the U.S./Mexican border. For a variety of reasons, I am not convinced that Wilcoxs arguments undermine my conclusion that legitimate states are entitled to design and enforce their own immigration policies.

The ‘Standard of Care’ Debate and Global Justice in Research

In this essay the ethical issues related to the ‘standard of care’ are discussed together with the implications for the treatment of the control group in transnational clinical trials. It is argued that the human right to health and the duty of justice formulate the moral basis on which this case should be debated.

A Provisional Duty of Humanitarian Intervention

Scholars and practitioners continue to call for the implementation of a duty of humanitarian intervention (HI). Indeed, from the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, to academics such as Kok-Chor Tan and Carla Bagnoli, a duty of HI must, they say, be institutionalised. This paper attempts to answer the question: Why? I suggest that the repeated attempts to categorise a duty of intervention, either as perfect or imperfect, have incorrectly understood the nature of this duty. We must first understand the categorisation of it as one of right (justice) not benevolence (ethics), and thus the calls for institutionalisation can be properly understood. Institutionalisation is not a more efficacious route, nor is it needed to promote the best consequences; it is necessary because of the logic of justice. I argue, therefore, that because a duty of HI is a duty of justice, in what amounts to a state of nature, the duty is better thought of as a provisional duty of justice. Moreover, doing so suggests who can be identified as the requisite agents for intervention.

Cosmopolitanism and Compatriot Duties

Defenders of duties of justice to compatriots sometimes criticize the aspirations of cosmopolitans to develop accounts of justice that that are global in scope. The criticisms are many and varied, including in particular concerns about whether cosmopolitanism can allow for appropriate patriotic regard for fellow-citizens, whether cosmopolitanism can allow for the political self-determination of states, and whether cosmopolitanism can account for the basis of duties of justice absent the existence of political communities.

Zobowiązania moralne wobec naszych i wobec obcych - komu mamy obowiązek pomagać?

The paper considers arguments concerning the obligation to assist strangers. It analyzes the problem of specifying obligations, which the inhabitants of the world have toward one another. The considerations focus on two closely connected questions: (1) what is the obligation to assist and what is its source? (2) what is the scope of the obligation to assist (who ought to assist whom)? The author considers the assumptions that are to be made if we take the obligation to assist distant strangers to be a duty of justice. The paper concentrates on the most frequent assumptions, which are of two kinds: (a) institutional and universal; (b) axiological and particular. It is pointed out, given various examples of international dilemmas, how these two types of arguments may justify a hierarchy of mutual obligations.

Rooted Cosmopolitanism: A Defence to Moderate Cosmopolitanism and/or Moderate Liberal Nationalism

The paper argues for ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’, understood as a way to reconcile universal duties of justice with particularist commitments and attachments. It considers various attempts at such a reconciliation, and argues that they are inadequate.