Much of the climate justice discussion revolves around how the remaining carbon budget should be globally allocated. Some authors defend the unjust enrichment interpretation of the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). According to this principle, those states unjustly enriched from historical emissions should pay. I argue that if the BPP is to be constructed along the lines of the unjust enrichment doctrine, countervailing reasons that might be able to block the existence of a duty of restitution should be assessed. One might (...) think that the duty to provide restitution no longer has moral weight if many benefits were already consumed, if the particular benefits obtained from historical emissions cannot be transferred from one country to another, or if present members of developed countries framed their life plans based upon the expectation of continued possession of those benefits. I show that none of these reasons negate the duty to provide restitution. (shrink)

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ admits many interpretations. In the philosophical literature on climate justice, it has typically been cashed out in terms of the following three principles: the ability to pay principle (APP), the beneficiary pays principle (BPP), and the contribution to problem principle (CPP). Many of these accounts have given prominence to the CPP and APP, but there are some who argue that the BPP deserves greater consideration. In this (...) paper, I want to ask whether the BPP must feature in any plausible account of remedial responsibility for climate change. I examine this question by looking at three different ways in which the BPP has been incorporated into accounts of climate burden-sharing. In each case, there are questions about the particular role that the BPP is assigned and it looks like either the BPP must be given equal prominence to the CPP, or the BPP might be redundant when it comes to specific task of remedying the injustices of climate change. I suggest in the conclusion one possible reason to maintain the BPP. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The view that innocent beneficiaries of injustice bear special duties to victims of injustice has recently come under attack. Luck egalitarian theorists have argued that thought experiments focusing on the way innocent beneficiaries should distribute the benefits they’ve received provide evidence against this view. The apparent special duties of innocent beneficiaries, they hold, are wholly reducible to general duties to compensate people for bad brute luck. In this paper we provide empirical evidence in defense of the view that innocent beneficiaries (...) have genuine special duties to victims of injustice. Through a series of four experiments, we show that judgments about the kinds of cases that luck egalitarian critics have provided do not undermine but rather support this view. We also explore a number of other questions that theorists working in this area have yet to discuss and provide suggestions for further research on the moral significance of benefiting from injustice. (shrink)

Some normative theorists believe that there is a principled moral reason not to retain benefits realized by injustice or wrongdoing. However, critics have argued that this idea is implausible. One purported problem is that the idea lacks an obvious rationale and that attempts to provide one have been unconvincing. This paper articulates and defends the idea that the principled reason in question has an expressive quality: it gets its reason-giving force from the symbolic aptness of such an act as an (...) expressive response to wrongdoing. The paper thus argues that at least in a certain subset of cases, renouncing benefits realized by injustice amounts to a powerful and uniquely apt expression of protest against the disrespect for the victim that is implied by the wrongdoer’s actions. The paper shows how this idea can inform the question of reparations for slavery and its aftermath in the United States. Lastly it develops an important objection to the argument presented and gives an account of how this objection can be met. (shrink)

The paper examines two backward-looking principles about how the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change should be distributed. According to the polluter pays principle, such costs should be borne by those who caused climate change. According to the beneficiary pays principle, they should be borne by those who have benefited from the activities causing climate change, regardless of whether they took part in such activities or not. The paper unpacks both principles, considers their main problems and contends that, (...) when properly combined, they can address such problems. (shrink)

Anthropogenic climate change is expected to contribute to mass migration from many different regions. Heyward and Ödalen (2016) propose a tailor-made migration option for victims of total territorial loss: a Free Movement Passport for the Territorially Dispossessed (PTD). The PTD presents a significant advancement over standard proposals for individual migration in response to total territorial loss. However, I argue that the compensatory obligations of states are more restrictive than the PTD scheme assumes (sec. 5), and that the contents of the (...) right to compensation of the territorially dispossessed are not as far-reaching as required by it (sec. 6). In response to these difficulties, I argue that its purpose is better served by means of collective migration and propose a Passport for Territorially Dispossessed Collectives, which is also well positioned to serve as a framework for compensating a range of other climate-change related losses (sec. 9). (shrink)

Do those of us living in the present have an obligation to rectify injustices committed by others in the distant past? This article is an attempt to revisit the problem of historical injustice by bringing together recent work on structural injustice in relation to the problem of wrongful benefit. The problem of benefitting from injustice, I argue, provides firmer grounds of obligation in forward-looking accounts of responsibility for historical injustice specifically. I argue (1) that if the negative effects of historical (...) injustice endure into the present, and (2) if we participate in structures that allow for its reproduction, then (3) our moral responsibility to set matters straight increases to the extent that we derive a benefit from the perpetuation of an unjust _status quo_. Finally, (4) a general moral obligation to make the world less unjust generates a motive for individuals to learn more about their place in a structure that reproduces the negative effects of historical injustice. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend fairness-based retributivism against two important objections, the no-benefit objection and the social injustice objection. I argue that the theory can defeat the no-benefit objection by developing an account of how crimes can be sources of unfairness by inflicting losses on people, and that it can blunt the social injustice objection by toning down the theory’s distributive aspirations. I conclude that fairness-based retributivism, contrary to received wisdom, merits further attention from legal and political philosophers.

I will discuss the relationship between two different accounts of remedial duty ascriptions. According to one account, the beneficiary account, individuals who benefit innocently from injustices ought to bear remedial responsibilities towards the victims of these injustices. According to another account, the causal account, individuals who caused injustices ought to bear remedial duties towards the victim. In this paper, I examine the relation between the principles central to these accounts: the Beneficiary Pays Principle and the well-established principle of Strict Liability (...) in law. I argue that both principles display a strong yet unexplored similarity as they make certain kinds of causal connection sufficient for incurring liability. Because of this similarity, I suggest that insights into the Beneficiary Pays Principle can be gained from exploring its relation with Strict Liability. In particular, I examine two new positive arguments that could be adapted to support of the Beneficiary Pays Principle: the Minimising Injustice Argument and the Normative Connection Argument. However, I’ll show that only one of those arguments, namely the Normative Connection Argument, can truly support the Beneficiary Pays Principle. I conclude that, if you endorse the Normative Connection Argument for Strict Liability, you have at least a strong prima facie reason to endorse the parallel argument for the Beneficiary Pays Principle. (shrink)