This essay provides a critical overview of the debate about corporate moral responsibility. Parties to the debate address whether corporations are the kinds of entities that can be blamed when they cause unjustified harm. Proponents of CMR argue that corporations satisfy the conditions for moral agency and so they are fit for blame. Their opponents respond that corporations lack one or more of the capacities necessary for moral agency. I review the arguments on both sides and conclude ultimately that what (...) divides the two is not so much competing conceptions of the corporation as it is disagreement about what moral agency requires. Homing in on the real site of contention will, it is hoped, allow future participants in the debate to focus their efforts more productively. (shrink)

According to the received view crimes like torture, rape, enslavement or enforced prostitution are domestic crimes if they are committed as isolated or sporadic events, but become crimes against humanity when they are committed as part of a ‘widespread or systematic attack’ against a civilian population. Only in the latter case can these crimes be prosecuted by the international community. One of the most influential accounts of this idea is Larry May’s International Harm Principle, which states that crimes against humanity (...) are those that somehow ‘harm humanity.’ I argue that this principle is unable to provide an adequate account of crimes against humanity. Moreover, I argue that the principle fails to account for the idea that crimes against humanity are necessarily group based. I conclude by suggesting that the problem with May’s account is that it relies on a harm-based conception of crime which is very popular, but ultimately mistaken. I submit that in order to develop an adequate theory of crimes against humanity we need to abandon the harm-based model and replace it with an alternative conception of crime and criminal law, one based on the notion of accountability. (shrink)

In the Anthropocene, human beings are capable of bringing about globally catastrophic outcomes that could damage conditions for present and future human life on Earth in unprecedented ways. This paper argues that the scale and severity of these dangers justifies a new international criminal offence of ‘postericide’ that would protect present and future people against wrongfully created dangers of near extinction. Postericide is committed by intentional or reckless systematic conduct that is fit to bring about near human extinction. The paper (...) argues that a proper understanding of the moral imperatives embodied in international criminal law shows that it ought to be expanded to incorporate a new law of postericide. (shrink)

Crimes against humanity are supposed to have a collective dimension with respect both to their victims and their perpetrators. According to the orthodox view, these crimes can be committed by individuals against individuals, but only in the context of a widespread or systematic attack against the group to which the victims belong. In this paper I offer a new conception of crimes against humanity and a new justification for their international prosecution. This conception has important implications as to which crimes (...) can be justifiably prosecuted and punished by the international community. I contend that the scope of the area of international criminal justice that deals with basic human rights violations should be wider than is currently acknowledged, in that it should include some individual violations of human rights, rather than only violations that have a collective dimension. (shrink)

Three thousand belligerents, mostly belonging to the military arm of Hamas, stormed Southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. Along with 3,000 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, these belligerents inva...

It is widely acknowledged that human rights law and international criminal law share core normative features. Yet, the literature has not yet reconstructed this underlying basis in a systematic way. In this contribution, I lay down the basis of such an account. I first identify a similar tension between a “moral” and a “political” approach to the normative foundations of those norms and to the legitimate role of international courts and tribunals adjudicating those norms. With a view to bring the (...) debate forward, I then turn to the practices of HRL and international criminal law to examine which of those approaches best illuminates some salient aspects of the adjudication of ICs. Finally, I argue that the political approach best explains the practice. While each preserves a distinct role, HRL and ICL both establish the basic conditions for the primary subject of international law, namely the state, to legitimately govern its own subjects constructed as free and equal moral agents. (shrink)

While the concept of humanity is most often referred to as the moral source of the Responsibility to Protect’s motivational capacity, humanity’s normative status and value has continued to be left assumed and/or unexplored. Consequently, there remains a considerable lack of analysis into humanity’s role in supposedly helping to both locate moral harm and subsequently provide a motivational cause that can drive protection practices in support of the Responsibility to Protect principle. In response to this lacuna, this article puts forward (...) three hypotheses regarding the motivational role of humanity in this process: humanity functioning as a rhetorical tool with no motivational qualities, humanity as a concept that works to redefine sovereignty in support of the Responsibility to Protect and humanity as a motivating principle that ultimately diminishes in influence as the Responsibility to Protect principle is diffused into action. Through this analysis, the article offers a more rigorous and sy... (shrink)

Current International Criminal Law suffers from at least four theoretical shortcomings regarding its ‘concept and meaning’, ‘ius puniendi’, ‘overall function’ and ‘purposes of punishment’. These issues are intimately interrelated; in particular, any reflection upon the last two issues without having first clarified the ius puniendi would not make sense. As argued elsewhere, in an initial contribution towards a consistent theory of ICL, the ius puniendi can be inferred from a combination of the incipient supranationality of the value-based world order and (...) the world citizens’ fundamental human rights predicated upon a Kantian concept of human dignity. On this basis, it is now possible to examine the overall function of ICL. Given the fact that ICL has not yet achieved the status of an autonomous discipline, the inquiry must start with a discussion of national theories of criminalisation. The article focuses on the two most important theories of criminalisation, namely the theories of protection of Rechtsgüter and the prevention of harm. Next, it examines whether and how these national theories can be transferred to ICL. (shrink)

Is there a duty to prosecute grave international crimes? Many have thought so, even if they recognize the obligation to be defeasible. However, the theoretical literature frequently leaves the grounds for such a duty inadequately specified, or unsystematically amalgamated, leaving it unclear which considerations should drive and shape processes of criminal accountability. Further, the circumstance leaves calls to end impunity vulnerable to skeptical worries concerning the risks and costs of punishing perpetrators. I argue that a qualified duty to prosecute can (...) be substantiated on the basis of a single class of reasons, though also that standard justifications of international criminal law (as currently conceived) are not up to the task. The account exploits the expressive dimension of punishment, but locates the central good of criminal accountability in its capacity to appropriately enable an agential stance on the part of subjects in transitional circumstances. It can legitimate, in a way to be specified, hope. The approach also displays the cynicism of an anti‐impunity ethos in the absence of a robust commitment to securing basic human rights in transitional circumstances. (shrink)

Research Articles Andrew Altman, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

Despite a common agenda of normative analysis of the international order, philosophical work on international political morality and international law and legal scholarship have, until recently, worked at a distance from one another.The mutual suspicion can be traced to different aims and methodologies, including a divide between work on matters of deep structure, on the one hand, and practical institutional analysis and prescription, on the other. Yet international law is a key part of the normative practices ofstates, has a direct (...) effect on state behavior, and, as a meth-odological matter, can contribute to good theorizing onmatters of international ethics. Recently, philosophical workhas demonstrated a greater engagement with the moral aspects of international law. One strand of scholarship has treated the rules of international law as a proper subject for philosophical inquiry. Another has used international legal rules to support moral arguments about aspects of the international order. Future dialogue and cooperation would benefit both fields, in particular on the challenges to global cooperation from nationalism and on strategies for allocating responsibilities among global actors for rectifying global harms. (shrink)

Recent philosophical research on normativity has clarified the nature and dynamics of social norms. Social norms are distinguished from legal and moral norms on the basis of their scope, their grounds, their characteristic forms of accountability, or some combination of these features. Because of their distinct character, social norms can reinforce practical prescriptions, prohibitions, and permissions provided to particular actors by legal or moral norms. They also can conflict drastically with those prescriptions, prohibitions, and permissions resulting in serious practical dilemmas. (...) The identification of normative principles capable of resolving practical dilemmas arising from conflicts between different kinds of norms is a major aim of contemporary moral and political philosophy. This dissertation contributes to this aim by establishing the significance of conflicts between social norms and legal or moral norms during mass atrocities and liberalizing political transitions. The dissertation argues that social norms, and changes in social norms, are critical components of accurate descriptions and responsible evaluations both legal and moral of the actions of individuals and groups before, during, and after mass atrocities. The dissertation contends, further, that distinct principles of justice may apply to transitional efforts by non-state actors to transform social norms in societies recovering from large-scale crimes. Three principal results follow from this dissertations effort to integrate the conceptual framework of social norms into the study of mass atrocity. First, the dissertation clarifies and extends the historiographical thesis of norm transformation, according to which participation by ordinary individuals in mass atrocities is at least partially explained by transformations in basic norms that structure social and political life. Second, the dissertation identifies a novel basis on which to apportion legal and moral accountability for mass atrocities between individuals and groups or collectivities i.e. on the basis of the specific contributions of social norms. Third, the dissertation provides new support for the disputed claim that distinct principles of justice apply to the various actors involved in liberalizing political transitions. (shrink)

Legal scholars and theorists have recently drawn a more sustained attention to the link between international human rights law (hereafter IHRL) and international criminal law (hereafter ICL). This concerns both positive and more normative accounts of the link. Whether positive or normative, the predominant approach to constructing the link is substantive. This overlap is normatively justified in similar terms by reference to a subset of moral human rights. In this paper, I offer an alternative to the substantive approach. After identifying (...) two flaws in the substantive approach (the problem of threshold and the problem of ethical neutrality), I defend what I call a structural account by focusing on duty‐holders. I start by reconstructing two structural characteristics common to IHRL and ICL qua international legal regimes: who has the authority to address violations of IHRL and ICL, and who can be liable for those violations. I then infer that public authority (functionally construed) constitutes the common structural core of IHRL and ICL. I rely on the extraterritorial application of IHRL and on the collective dimension of ICL violations to further support the argument. I finally offer an argument explaining the normative point of those structural features. I hold that IHRL and ICL (their adjudicative and liability regimes) are both necessary (but clearly not sufficient) to render this exercise of public authority legitimate to its subjects. (shrink)

If contemporary political theory in the area of international justice is to accomplish its aim of clarifying and making coherent the meaning of justice in an international context, the question of the appropriate role and responsibility of international criminal law must be answered. International criminal law must be more than simply domestic laws that are prosecuted at the international level. However, the question of what makes an international crime such that it deserves this special classification and international condemnation has not (...) been adequately theorized. This paper examines the character of international law as expressed by two theorists, Allen Buchanan and Larry May, and reveals the deficiencies of their theories. Then, it offers the first steps to a better theory, one that demands that two thresholds be met for an action to be considered international crime: the severity threshold and the agency threshold. It argues that these two thresholds restrict the domain of international criminal law to crimes that are of significant concern to the global community by way of their threat to political organization. International crimes are the jurisdiction of the international community because they threaten the most basic physical security human rights and because they originate out of the fundamental nature of humans as social entities and maliciously distort and threaten this natural inclination. (shrink)

Democracy and human rights have long been strongly connected in international covenants. In documents such as 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, democracy is justified both intrinsically in terms of popular sovereignty and instrumentally as the best way to “foster the full realization of all human rights.” Yet, even though they are human and thus universal rights, political rights are often surprisingly specific. In the Covenant, for example, “the (...) right to take part in the conduct of public affairs” is equated with “the right to vote and to be elected.” More often then not, their realization is left to states and their constitutions, as for example in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. Political rights have a “peculiar” status among enumerated human rights, and this difficulty has to do with deep assumptions about the nature and scope of democracy and political community that remain unexamined by the drafters of these important declarations. (shrink)