The purpose of this article is briefly to present a case for the principle of reparation as a new jus in bello principle for just humanitarian intervention. The article is divided into three sections. In “Restorative Justice and Civilian Protection”, I investigate the idea of restorative justice in order to consider whether or not it can complement the shortcomings of the just war tradition in civilian protection. In “The Legal Framework on Reparation: Its Scope and Limitations”, I examine the scope (...) of the law of armed conflict on reparatory measures in order to consider whether and how ideas of and measures for restorative justice might be incorporated in the jus in bello framework for military humanitarian intervention. In “The Issue of Civilian Victims: A Case for Reparation”, I explore the implications of reparatory measures for victims in order to suggest that these measures are not only beneficial to civilian victims but also imperative to be taken by the interveners if they undertake military intervention within the jus in bello framework and claim its moral justifiability. (shrink)

Driven by a sharp increase in claims for reparations, reparative justice has become a topic of academic debate. To some extent this debate has been marred by a failure to realize the complexity of reparative justice. In this essay we try to amend this shortcoming. We do this by developing a taxonomy of different kinds of wrongs that can underwrite claims to reparations. We identify four kinds of wrongs: entitlement violations, unjust exclusions from an otherwise acceptable system of entitlements, and (...) two kinds where a social practice systematically fails to embody an acceptable system of entitlements. In deliberation about what is required to repair a historical injustice the weight of backward- and forward-looking considerations is a function of the distinctive features of the injustice in question. Hence, the first step in adjudicating claims for reparation is to identify what kind of wrong the claim arises from. From the taxonomy of wrongs we are thus able to construct what we call the Field of Reparative Justice, which illustrates how the structure of deliberation for reparative justice tracks the distinctive features of different kinds of wrongs. (shrink)

In an era when the public and shareholders increasingly demand greater accountability from institutions for racial injustice and slavery, scholarship on corporate reparations is more and more essential. This article argues that corporations have played a significant role in the cultural dehumanization of Blackness and therefore have a particular responsibility to make repair. Cultural dehumanization refers to embedding anti-Blackness into US culture in service of capitalist profit accumulation, which has resulted in status and material inequalities between Blacks and whites that (...) have persisted from slavery to the present. More specifically, the article argues corporations have a moral duty to offer reparations to Black Americans regardless of any redress offered by other perpetrators of anti-Blackness. It appeals to tort law in providing a moral justification for corporate reparations to Black Americans. (shrink)

All of these claims for reparations have mobilized popular support, and all share a degree of intuitive plausibility. The challenge to the theorist is to judge whether and which of such demands are grounded in sound principles of political normativity, so as to be able to select out the valid claims and to measure how the urgency of these claims compares with other demands on the public agenda. The most basic question for those considering the justifications of reparations is how (...) to orient their theories within the space of reasons. Do valid claims for reparation rest at the deepest level on reasons we have for redressing a past injustice? Or do they rather rest on reasons we have to improve our current relations so that we can get along better in the future? Are valid reparative demands backward- or forward-looking? (shrink)

In this thesis, I discuss the ethics of civilian protection in armed conflict from the perspective of applied ethics. Specifically, I attempt to explore a way to supplement the limitations of just war theory in civilian protection by providing a fundamental case for civilian protection, by way of considering insights gleaned from David Hume’s conception of justice, and from the perspective of professional military ethics. Moreover, I will further defend my argument for the protection of civilians in armed conflict by (...) demonstrating the immorality of torture. In Chapter 1, I discuss the status of civilians by examining legal and ethical concepts. In Chapter 2, I critically discuss the scope and limitations of just war theory in civilian protection. In Chapter 3, I analyse how civilian protection was considered and how civilians were harmed in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In Chapter 4, I critically examine civilian protection as part of just conduct in armed conflict by referring to Hume’s conception of justice. In Chapter 5, I examine civilian protection from the perspective of military ethics. In Chapter 6, I make a case against the moral justifiability of torturing civilians in order to illustrate how civilians should be protected in an extreme situation. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

En este trabajo respondo una objeción a la tesis de que la teoría de Rawls debe atender problemas relacionados a la injusticia histórica. Esta objeción sostiene que dicha teoría está justificada en no considerar problemas de injusticia histórica debido a su supuesto carácter exclusivamente prospectivo. La objeción tiene dos presentaciones diferentes. Primero, como la idea de que hay razones internas a la propia teoría de Rawls que justifican dicho carácter exclusivamente prospectivo —tales como el problema de elección modelado en la (...) posición original y el hecho de que la justicia-como-equidad debe ser una concepción de justicia no-comprehensiva. Segundo, como la idea de que hay razones externas a la teoría de Rawls —en concreto, la supuesta existencia del así llamado problema de la no-identidad, que justifican el carácter exclusivamente prospectivo no sólo de los principios de justicia rawlsianos sino de cualquier otra concepción de justicia distributiva. Trataré de mostrar que esta objeción, tanto en su presentación interna como externa, es equivocada. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for the permissibility of post-conflict amnesties, although not on prudential grounds. It argues that amnesties of a certain scope, targeted to certain categories of perpetrators, and offered in certain contexts are morally permissible because they are an acknowledgment of the difficulty of attributing criminal responsibility in mass violence contexts. Based on this idea, the paper develops the further claim that deciding which amnesties are permissible and which ones are not should be decided on a case-by-case (...) basis. Against what seems to be an increasingly popular assumption of some international actors, just as "blanket" amnesties are impermissible, so is an absolutist rejection of all types of amnesties. (shrink)

In this paper we claim that Rawls’s theory is compatible with the absence of rectification of extremely important historical injustices within a given society. We hold that adding a new principle to justice-as-fairness may amend this problem. There are four possible objections to our claim: First, that historical rectification is not required by justice. Second, that, even when historical rectification is a matter of justice, it is not a matter of distributive justice, so that Rawls’s theory is justified in leaving (...) it unaddressed. Third, that dealing with historical injustice is outside of the scope of ideal theory, so that even when historical rectification is required by justice, Rawls’s theory starts with the assumption that no such historical injustice has occurred. Fourth, that while historical injustice is within the scope of Rawls’s theory, there is no need for further principles of justice to deal with it, so that the correct regulation of the principles of justice-as-fairness would ensure the rectification of all relevant historical injustices of a particular society. While we offer several arguments against the first and second objections, we address the last two at length and show that both fail. (shrink)