Grounds Of Justice Research Articles

Beyond the state: the moral nexus between corporations and refugees

ABSTRACT A common assumption within the migration ethics literature is that it is only states that have the power to admit foreigners to their territory. However, this assumption misses something important. While it is true that it is states that have the ultimate power to admit, other actors can possess a derivative power from the laws that states put in place. By establishing a system of work visas, for instance, states lend private corporations, and other employers, the power to nominate foreigners for admission by making job offers. For many foreigners, a job offer is what they require to start a new life in a new country. The question then arises how corporations should use this derivative power? One might assume that they should use it as they typically do: to pursue their business interests and by doing so (we hope) benefit their stakeholders including the state and its citizens. However, could there not be other reasons, besides profit seeking, to offer refugees a visa-conferring job? If hiring refugees does not greatly harm their business, it is arguable that corporations could be obliged to use their derivative power to do so on humanitarian grounds. Moreover, some corporations also seem to be obliged to use this power on grounds of corrective justice. This paper advances these possibilities. It has three sections. First, I will look at how much discretion corporations have in terms of employment and migration laws in some European countries. Second, I will present an argument for why corporations are morally permitted to facilitate admission for refugees by offering them a visa-conferring job. In the final section, I will then defend a stronger claim, namely that corporations are possibly obliged to do so on humanitarian grounds or on grounds of corrective justice.

Analysis of the Triple-Talaq Within the Framework of Judiciary in India With Reforms of Sharia Law

Divorce in Islam usually takes variety of forms. The Traditional legal categories of Islamic divorce are talaq (repudiation by husband), khula (buying of freedom by the wife) and mubarat (mutual consent). The rules of divorce have always been governed by Sharia, as interpreted by traditional Islamic jurisprudence. However practices have often digressed from true Islamic spirit.Though Quran is egalitarian and justice its cornerstone but gender inequality of divorce practices that have existed in pre-Islamic Arabia are still vogue. By all reasons, women are particularly vulnerable. Triple-talaq has been an issue of much controversy and debate. The practice has been criticized on grounds of gender justice, equality and human rights. The Supreme Court of India in its landmark judgment on 22nd August 2017, have declared the practice of triple talaq as un-constitutional and has left to the government to legislate on the issue. However, what the court has banned is the ‘instant’ version of triple talaq, where the husband utters the word talaq thrice and capriciously breaks the marriage-bond. It must be pointed out that as regards the Muslim community all issues relating to family sphere are regulated by the Muslim Personal Laws. The Constitution of India lays down that personal laws of the community would remain untouched and all issues where both parties are Muslims should be adjudicated in the light of their personal laws.

A Renaissance of the Doctrine of Rebus Sic Stantibus?

Once the ‘popular plaything of Realpolitiker’ the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus post the 1969 VCLT is often described as an objective rule by which, on grounds of equity and justice, a fundamental change of circumstances may be invoked as a ground for termination of a treaty. Yet recent practice from some States suggests that it is returning with a new livery. They point to an understanding that is premised on vital State interests––a view popular among scholars such as Erich Kaufmann at the beginning of the last century.

A RENAISSANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF REBUS SIC STANTIBUS?

AbstractOnce the ‘popular plaything of Realpolitiker’ the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus post the 1969 VCLT is often described as an objective rule by which, on grounds of equity and justice, a fundamental change of circumstances may be invoked as a ground for termination of a treaty. Yet recent practice from some States suggests that it is returning with a new livery. They point to an understanding that is premised on vital State interests––a view popular among scholars such as Erich Kaufmann at the beginning of the last century.

Tax Uniformity as a Requirement of Justice

Barbara Fried takes the view that uniform taxation—that is, a single rate applicable to all income levels—cannot be defended on any grounds of justice. She goes further by saying that, of all possible rate structures, it might be “the hardest one”? to ground in “a”? theory of fairness. Using the contractarian-constitutional perspective advanced by John Rawls and James Buchanan, this article argues that tax uniformity can be seen as a requirement of justice. After modelling how the political world realistically decides to distribute tax shares (self-interested parties act under a majority constraint), I show how the uniformity principle could emerge from the constitutional contract. In other words, rational individuals would choose uniformity as a procedural constraint under a “veil of uncertainty”?; that is, with limited knowledge regarding their positions under the future application of the rule. Moreover, I elucidate how the uniformity requirement integrates generalized criteria of fairness and efficiency into fiscal politics as it precludes fiscal exploitation and constrains majorities, and their most influential subgroups, to opt for policies in the direction of the Pareto frontier, and as such promotes outcomes acceptable to all participants.

The resentment-ressentiment complex: a critique of liberal discourse

This article offers a critique of a widespread political discourse that distinguishes ‘resentment’ from ‘ressentiment’, legitimating the former and dismissing the latter. This distinction not only incorporates some reactive sentiments at the cost of the depoliticisation of others, but also obscures the conditions of political action and judgement as such. Why is it necessary to constantly protect the socio-political order from the risk of moral corruption in these terms, and for whom? First, a historical distinction is made between three problems that play a key role in the evaluation of the reactive attitudes: their rationality, their authenticity, and their justness. It is then argued that the first two problems are ill-posed. These problems concern differences in degree, and are therefore always prone to the relativism of what, retrospectively, can be called ‘the resentment-ressentiment complex’. The true problem with retributive passions concerns a difference in kind, not between resentment and ressentiment, but between active affects and passive or reactive affects. This Nietzschean ‘demoralisation’ of the problem of reactive attitudes by means of a historico-systematic reorientation leads to the concluding claim that while moral sentiments and political actions are always entangled, only the latter constitute the ground of social justice.

Crip Technoscience Manifesto

As disabled people engaged in disability community, activism, and scholarship, our collective experiences and histories have taught us that we are effective agents of world building and dismantling toward more socially just relations.The grounds for social justice and world remaking, however, are frictioned;technologies, architectures, and infrastructures are often designed and implemented without committing to disability as a difference that matters. This manifesto calls attention to the powerful, messy, non-innocent, contradictory, and nevertheless crucial work of what we name as “crip technoscience,” practices of critique, alteration, and reinvention of our material-discursive world. Disabled people are experts and designers of everyday life. But we also harness technoscience for political action, refusing to comply with demands to cure, fix, or eliminate disability. Attentive to the intersectional workings of power and privilege, we agitate against independence and productivity as requirements for existence. Instead, we center technoscientific activism and critical design practices that foster disability justice.

National Courts Step Up: Syrian Cases Proceeding in Domestic Courts

Historically, what we today call international criminal law was primarily adjudicated before domestic courts. This chapter discusses the jurisdictional bases for prosecuting international crimes with reference to a survey of cases proceeding in foreign courts and involving events in Syria. When it comes to crimes committed during the Syrian conflict, domestic courts have emerged as fertile grounds for justice given the failure of the International Criminal Court referral effort, the lack of multilateral support for a hybrid or ad hoc tribunal devoted to Syria, and the perceived legal impediments to building international justice institutions outside the Security Council. A number of domestic trials involving events and actors in Syria are underway on the basis of diverse principles of jurisdiction and featuring a range of criminal charges and fact patterns. These cases fall into two general buckets. One set of cases involves foreign fighters who have returned home to face charges under anti-terrorism legislation or laws criminalizing their participation in foreign wars. A second subset of cases involves individuals who stand accused of committing international crimes stricto sensu. These latter cases are enabled by the incorporation of international criminal law into domestic penal codes, a global legislative trend occasioned in part by the ratification of the Rome Statute (even though that treaty technically does not require domestic incorporation of ICC crimes). Facilitating these cases is the proliferation of special prosecutorial units dedicated to investigating international crimes; global mutual legal assistance arrangements; the formation of joint investigative teams focused on the prosecution of transnational crimes; training programs dedicated to investigating international crimes; and Europe-wide institutions such as EUROPOL, the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), and the Eurojust Genocide Network. This jurisprudential survey yields a number of interesting observations. First, the cases skew towards terrorism, as opposed to atrocity, charges. Given the broad reach of material support for terrorism statutes, these crimes are easier to prove with available evidence and also respond to sovereign national security priorities. Second, most of the existing indictments involve single incidents (rather than large operations or systemic abuses). To the extent that war crimes charges are forthcoming, they tend to involve relatively minor charges, often for lack of evidence of more serious crimes that are implied by the proof at hand. Third, from the perspective of trends in the defendants involved, most indictments tend to focus on low-level perpetrators, rather than the architects of violence or those most responsible. Fourth, and also troubling, is that the vast majority of cases that have moved forward have targeted members of opposition groups — including ISIL members — rather than Syrian government personnel. Senior figures, and regime actors, have simply not traveled to Europe or elsewhere that these cases are being pursued. As a result, investigations against Syrian government perpetrators have remained aspirational works in progress. That said, national authorities are increasingly organizing structural investigations on the conflict and its various armed groups, which allow them to move quickly against particular individuals as soon as they are within reach. Fifth, as is apparent from the available evidentiary records, many of these cases are benefiting from the sophisticated documentation work of non-governmental organizations that are sharing their holdings with national authorities. Sixth, and finally, the testimony of asylum-seekers and others who have sought refuge in the prosecuting state has proven crucial, attesting to the importance of prosecutorial authorities building trust and genuine connections with Syrian diaspora communities. All told, while important, these domestic proceedings remain episodic and opportunistic. Given the investigatory and prosecutorial realities, the cases in the aggregate are not representative of the full scope of the international crimes being committed in Syria. Although these results are disappointing if the goal is comprehensive accountability, these cases are establishing important legal precedents, providing domestic authorities with valuable experience prosecuting international crimes, offering a measure of justice to victims, and punishing individuals accused of horrific acts. In addition to putting a dent in impunity and denying safe haven to perpetrators, cases in foreign courts promote stability by preventing victims and victim groups from taking justice into their own hands in their places of refuge. Even singular cases can be highly salient and can exert a multiplier effect, signaling that justice is possible and helping advocates overcome political resistance elsewhere. When situated against the obstacles to exercising international jurisdiction, these results should be celebrated, since domestic courts have emerged as the only potential forum to administer justice for Syria to date.

Algorithmic accountability and digital justice: A critical assessment of technical and sociotechnical approaches

ABSTRACTThe concept of digital justice is intended to open up discourse about strategies for bringing relief to those who believe they have been discriminated against or harmed by algorithmic decision making. Digital justice has depended on algorithmic accountability, a means by which entities can be held accountable for the consequences of algorithmic decision making. This paper critically examines the concept of algorithmic accountability to assess its utility as a ground for digital justice and argues that it is fraught with difficulties. After discussing digital justice and algorithmic discrimination, algorithmic accountability is decomposed into two types, technical and sociotechnical. These approaches are critically assessed and a cautionary note is struck about the difficulty of enacting algorithmic accountability. If this argument is persuasive, it implies that the concept of digital justice also has difficulties. The paper concludes with suggestions for moving forward that do not use either version of algorithmic accountability.

Boundary-Breaking Disposition against Post-Truth: Five Big Questions for Religious Education

This paper articulates how religious education can broaden our perspective on post-truth from simply an issue of critical reading to a philosophical challenge involving larger issues such as our sense of self, perception of others, and grounding of justice. Pointing out that the root cause of post-truth is our parochial, defensive sense of self and community, which premises a boundary-drawing/building mindset, the author suggests the feeling of transcendence as an intellectual, psychological, and spiritual ground to cultivate a counterforce, which is the boundary-breaking disposition. This rationale is developed particularly by the discussion of the Five Big Questions that the author has been using for his Introduction to Religion course: Ultimate Meaning, Transcendence, Personal Identity, Vocation, and Service.

A Synthetic Approach to the Grounds of Global Justice

This paper argues that neither the relational approach nor the non-relational approach to global justice is at once necessary and sufficient to deal with complex cases of global (in)justice. In this intervention in the dispute between relational and non-relational approaches, the aim of the paper is not to support one side and oppose the other, but to combine both approaches in order to arrive at a more robust approach. Using the strengths of the relational approach to compensate for the weaknesses of the non-relational approach and vice versa, the aim of the paper is to set out a mixed, combinatorial or synthetic approach that will be used to address complex cases of global (in)justice. Rather thandiscussing how the synthetic approach applies to a particular complex case of global (in)justice, the paper shows how a synthetic approach that intends to address complex cases of global (in)justice will look like. Perhaps, colloquially in Hegelian dialectics, the relational approach can be seen as a thesis, the non-relational approach as an antithesis and the combination of both approaches as a synthesis.

Set the Torturers Free: Transitional Justice and Peace vs Justice Dilemma in Burma/Myanmar

Burma/Myanmar seems to be a perfect ground for transitional justice with both long-failed transitions to democracy that seemed to succeed in 2015 finally and smouldering civil war taking place there since 1948 (since the 1990s limited to Borderlands). Unfortunately, the political realities in Burma/Myanmar make it unlikely, if not impossible, for transitional justice to be applicable in Burma/Myanmar. The victorious in 2015 elections democratic opposition party, National League for Democracy (NLD) came to power thanks to the political deal with the former military government and is consequently being forced to cohabitate politically with the army that still holds critical political checks over the government. It made NLD’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi to conduct moderate domestic policy without trying to charge the generals for their former crimes. In this circumstances, transitional justice is unwanted by mainstream political actors (NLD, the army) and seen as threatening to peace by many in the Myanmar society. This approach firmly places Burma/Myanmar on one side of the ‘peace vs justice’ dilemma. It answers the “torturer problem”, one of the central problems of transitional justice – how to deal with members of the previous regime which violated human rights – in ‘old fashion’ way, by granting them full amnesty. As such Burma/Myanmar case also falsifies an optimistic claim that transitional justice is necessary for political reforms.

Contested Vulnerability: A Case Study of Girls in secure care

Figures from 2015 show that two hundred and five children entered secure accommodation from England and Wales. 47% were placed because they were on remand or sentenced for committing a serious offence. 43% were placed by social services under a child welfare order. The remaining 10% were secured by their local authority on criminal justice grounds. This paper uses the example of girls in secure care to explore understandings that are applied to young people considered ‘vulnerable’ and ‘troublesome’ simultaneously. While policy around secure accommodation claims that it offers a therapeutic intervention, to help young people work through their problems and learn appropriate coping mechanisms, it also keeps them ‘safe’ by physically locking them away from the world in which they have been entrenched. Using detailed ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores the experiences of girls living in a setting usually exempt from scrutiny and showcases their views of being ‘worked with’ in an institution designed to enable reform. Significantly, findings show that girls rejected the ‘vulnerable’ label that was ascribed to them and instead felt that vulnerability was better defined by life experience instead of age. By examining girl's own perspectives of their complex pathways into secure care, this paper will contest the binding of childhood and vulnerability and argue that such an act disenfranchises girls from the services that are designed to help them.

Категорія правового буття у вченні Платона.

The article discovers the main characteristics of legal ontology, which Plato highlights in his writings, reveals the main essential powers that define the law. The author determined that justice is a concept that is identified with the law, it ingicates civilized human dignity, non-compliance with it makes suffering. The law may be different, and it is important his connection with legal existence, the law is just a form, a cup that needs to be filled with content.It is proved that logos, freedom and constructive coexistence are three key pillars on which the legal existence of Plato is based. Superhuman and supra-state metaphysical law gives grounds for justice and norms.For Plato, the idea is not exposed to time, it is always equally true. Thus, the legal existence is called to keep the legal criterion as clearly as possible so as not to lose its content in the field of political and legal changes.From the doctrine of Plato we can highlight the forces that affect the existence of space. First, it’s a destiny. This means that all time measurements in outer space are open. Destiny moves the cosmos to a certain future, that’s why nothing is taken from nowhere, and nowhere does it happen, everything is organized even in the time dimension. Thus, the task of law is not prediction of the future, but giving of all possible variants of behavior and their placement in legal reality. The second force is a strong desire. It is also an inalienable ontological attribute of law, since one way or another, it is expressed in certain ordinances, with certain will – to do something or refrain from certain actions. Consequently, the legal existence is always some kind of will, which must be performed, otherwise it is an isolated phenomenon and processes.The imagery of myth for Plato is an analogy that the human conscience needs in order to perceive the hegemony of reason in its relationship.

Protected to death: systematic exclusion of pregnant women from Ebola virus disease trials

BackgroundFor 30 years, women have sought equal opportunity to be included in trials so that drugs are equitably studied in women as well as men; regulatory guidelines have changed accordingly. Pregnant women, however, continue to be excluded from trials for non-obstetric conditions, though they have been included for trials of life-threatening diseases because prospects for maternal survival outweighed potential fetal risks. Ebola virus disease is a life-threatening infection without approved treatments or vaccines. Previous Ebola virus (EBOV) outbreak data showed 89–93% maternal and 100% fetal/neonatal mortality. Early in the 2013–2016 EBOV epidemic, an expert panel pointed to these high mortality rates and the need to prioritize and preferentially allocate unregistered interventions in favor of pregnant women (and children). Despite these recommendations and multiple ethics committee requests for their inclusion on grounds of justice, equity, and medical need, pregnant women were excluded from all drug and vaccine trials in the affected countries, either without justification or on grounds of potential fetal harm. An opportunity to offer pregnant women the same access to potentially life-saving interventions as others, and to obtain data to inform their future use, was lost. Once again, pregnant women were denied autonomy and their right to decide.ConclusionWe recommend that, without clear justification for exclusion, pregnant women are included in clinical trials for EBOV and other life-threatening conditions, with lay language on risks and benefits in information documents, so that pregnant women can make their own decision to participate. Their automatic exclusion from trials for other conditions should be questioned.

Engaging with Forst's 'Right to Justification': Kantian Analogies and the Problem of Subjectivity

In the following sections I engage with Forst’s treatment of justification and how this relates to a fundamental “duty” to justification. I raise doubts on the equation that he establishes between the unconditionality of a Kantian moral imperative and the pretense of unconditionality of the duty to justification (§1). As a result, I contest that the right to justification stands as a “fundamentum inconcussum” of a justificatory theory of justice and suggest, alternatively, that the Kantian account takes the justification of morality and law as elements of a cooperative scheme of justice. A corollary to this point is the problem of pluralism and the dialogical nature of reason as a capacity to take the standpoint perspective of the other (§1.1). I will argue that at times, Forst’s moral grounding of justice might raise concerns with a truly post-metaphysical doctrine of justice. Attached to this point and to the charge of selectivity is the problem of legal subjectivisation that arises for those “affected subjects” in a Forstian sense, that might nevertheless never enter into a process of justification of justice. Therefore, secondly, and connected to the first point I hold that Forst’s justificatory theory of justice needs a more robust theory of subjectivity, one that is capable of accounting why and how individuals become moral subjects in a full concrete way, that is, as subjects of these societies. Since the political terrain appears to be crossed by a radically irreconciliable dichotomy between the social processes of subject formation and the formulation of justificatory claims of justice, Forst’s preordained conception of individuality faces the risk of becoming a non-starter for a socially embedded justification of justice that is incapable of including the rightless other as a subject of law (§2).

The Coherence of Luck Egalitarianism

One of the foremost egalitarian theories in recent years, luck egalitarianism, has recently been subjected to the charge that it is in fact incoherent. This charge is brought by David Miller who highlights two dimensions of luck egalitarianism: on the one hand a commitment to the justice of certain inequalities arising from responsible choices; on the other a commitment to injustice of brute inequalities. The putative incoherence emerges in cases where the inequalities that justice requires on the basis of individuals' responsible choices also entail brute luck inequalities for which there are the very same grounds of justice to condemn. Here I argue that the charge of incoherence against luck egalitarianism fails. In service of this I clarify the quite specific sense in which luck egalitarianism requires inequalities and demonstrate the coherence of this with its condemnation of other inequalities.

Systemic domination as ground of justice

This paper develops a domination-based practice-dependent approach to justice, according to which it is practices of systemic domination which can be said to ground demands from justice. The domination-based approach developed overcomes the two most important objections levelled to alternative practice-dependent approaches. First, it eschews conservative implications and hence is immune to the status quo objection. Second, it is immune to the redundancy objection, which doubts whether empirical facts and practices can really play an irreducible role in grounding justice. In theorising dominating practices in terms of practices of social power, a domination-based approach makes justice dependent on factual information in three ways: First, the principle of non-domination is indeterminate and can only be spelled out by taking into view particular contexts of domination. Second, the principle of non-domination is conditional on the existence of practices of social power. Third, social power possesses a structural ontology – to know whether A has social power over B we need to turn to social rules distributing agents' higher order status of normative authority towards each other. This explains in what way practices of social power – and of domination – are both factual and normative practices and hence how such practices are non-redundant in grounding justice.

From a Pluralism of Grounds to Proto‐Legal Relations: Accounting for the Grounds of Obligations of Justice

AbstractIn this paper I discuss critically Mathias Risse's paper “Responsibility and Global Justice.” First, I argue that for Risse's pluralist account of the grounds of justice to hold together, there is need to presuppose a monist standpoint which ultimately contributes to grounding principles of justice. Second, I point out that Risse's understanding of obligations of accountability and justification is rather narrow in that it functions as an addendum to obligations of justice. Conversely, I will suggest that the obligation of accountability plays a deeper role: The conditions that ground it feature at the same time among the grounds of obligations of justice. Accordingly, the kind of relation that gives rise to a duty among agents to account for their actions must be in place when obligations of justice obtain. Following on from these remarks I will adumbrate an alternative account of the relation which grounds (enforceable) obligations of justice.

Responsibility and Global Justice

AbstractThe two traditional ways of thinking about justice at the global level either limit the applicability of justice to states—the only distributions that can be just or unjust, strictly speaking, are within the state—or else extend it to all human beings. The view I defend in On Global Justice (Risse ) rejects both of these approaches. Instead, my view, and thus my attempt at meeting the aforementioned challenge, acknowledges the existence of multiple grounds of justice. My purpose here is to explain what my view has to say about responsibility. First of all, I explain what my view implies about the responsibilities of the state for the realization of justice. Then I explain that in addition to obligations of justice, my view also gives rise to obligations of account‐giving. I end by sketching what all this implies for institutional reform at the global level.