In recent decades, concepts of group agency and the morality of groups have increasingly been discussed by philosophers. Notions of collective or joint duties have been invoked especially in the debates on global justice, world poverty and climate change. This paper enquires into the possibility and potential nature of moral duties individuals in unstructured groups may hold together. It distinguishes between group agents and groups of people which – while not constituting a collective agent – are nonetheless capable of performing (...) a joint action. It attempts to defend a notion of joint duties which are neither duties of a group agent nor duties of individual agents, but duties held jointly by individuals in unstructured groups. Furthermore, it seeks to illuminate the relation between such joint duties on the one hand and individual duties on the other hand. Rebutting an argument brought forward by Wringe, the paper concludes that it is not plausible to assume that all humans on earth can together hold a duty to mitigate climate change or to combat global poverty given that the members of that group are not capable of joint action. (shrink)

“Coalition of the willing” is a phrase that we hear invoked with frequency in world politics. Significantly, it is generally accompanied by claims to moral responsibility. Yet the label commonly used to connote a temporary, purpose-driven, self-selected collection of states sits uneasily alongside these assertions of moral responsibility.This article explores how the informal nature of such associations should inform judgments of moral responsibility. I begin by briefly recounting what I call a model of institutional moral agency in order to explain (...) why it seems theoretically and practically problematic to talk about the moral responsibilities of informal associations. I then focus on coalitions of the willing as prominent, and challenging, examples of such associations, before raising misgivings about my own rather stark distinction if it means that accounts of moral responsibility must be reduced to the members—or potential members—of such coalitions in a way that neglects the moral significance of their acting together. Prompted by these concerns, I explore arguments by Virginia Held and Larry May about moral responsibility in relation to informal associations and identify insights that can be taken from these positions to refine our expectations and evaluations of the actions associated with such collectivities. Finally, I consider the particular implications of these insights in relation to the widely espoused duty to intervene to rescue vulnerable populations. (shrink)

Philosophical writing about the legal practice of punishment has traditionally focused on two central questions: what (if anything) justifies the practice of tr.

Punishing groups raises a difficult question, namely, how their punishment can be justified at all. Some have argued that punishing groups is morally problematic because of the effects that the punishment entails for their members. In this paper we argue against this view. We distinguish the question of internal justice—how punishment-effects are distributed—from the question of external justice—whether the punishment is justified. We argue that issues of internal justice do not in general undermine the permissibility of punishment. We also defend (...) the permissibility of what some call “random punishment.” We argue that, for some kinds of collectives, there is no general obligation to internally distribute the punishment-effects equally or in proportion to individual contribution. (shrink)