In this chapter, I bring non-ideal theory to bear on the ethics of immigration. In particular, I explore what the obligations of liberal states would be if they were to attempt to implement migration arrangements that conform to liberal-cosmopolitan principles. I argue that some of the obligations states have are feasibility-insensitive, while some are feasibility-sensitive. I show that such obligations can have as their content both the inclusion and exclusion of prospective immigrants, and that they can be grounded in the (...) requirements of liberal justice, mere capacity to assist, as well as past or foreseeable contribution to harm. The chapter therefore explores the possibility of an international migration regime that takes human rights seriously whilst avoiding the twin pitfalls of strict immigration restrictions and the complete liberalization of immigration. (shrink)

Public relations scholars have demonstrated contradictory views regarding the application of universal versus culture-specific approaches for understanding global public relations ethics. However, few comparative studies have empirically explored public relations ethics on a global scale. To that end, this study represents an exploratory attempt to provide a descriptive picture of public relations professional associations and their codes of ethics across 107 countries. In conclusion, we argue that honesty, safeguarding of confidences of clients, and prohibition of conflicts of interest of competing (...) clients should be accepted as the universal values, while other issues, such as free flow of information and fees and gifts, could be understood as the relativistic values specific to a nation's situation and needs. (shrink)

I present an interpretation of ideal theory that is grounded in the idea of society as a fair scheme of cooperation, which Rawls describes as the most fundamental idea of justice as fairness. A key element of the Rawlsian idea of cooperation, I claim, is that the individual participants of a genuinely cooperative scheme—whatever its scale—are morally accountable to each other for complying with the scheme’s rules. This means that each participant has the moral standing to demand of the others (...) that they comply with the rules. I argue that the logic of these moral demands requires that the scheme’s rules be worked out on the basis of a strict compliance assumption. In justice as fairness, society as a whole is a grand scheme of cooperation. The principles of justice constitute the moral terms of association for this cooperative scheme, and hence define the moral demands that citizens, as such, may make of one another. Thus, these principles of justice must likewise be worked out on the basis of a strict compliance assumption. I contrast this interpretation with the standard telic alternative, which grounds the strict compliance assumption in its role as part of the theory of a realistic utopia, and argue for the possibility of non-utopian ideal theories. (shrink)

This chapter describes a philosophical approach to theorizing justice, mapping out some main strands of the tradition leading up to contemporary political philosophy. We first briefly discuss what distinguishes a philosophical approach to justice from other possible approaches to justice, by explaining the normative focus of philosophical theories of justice – that is, a focus on questions not about how things actually are, but about how things ought to be. Next, we explain what sorts of methods philosophers use to justify (...) theories of justice. Following this, in the longest section, we highlight major questions about justice that have drawn the attention of philosophers, and indicate how competing conceptions of justice have arisen from differing answers to these questions. The goal here is not to answer but to elucidate some of the larger questions about justice, as well as to establish a framework for understanding and distinguishing different kinds of claims about justice and some of the relations between them. (shrink)

This chapter describes how philosophical theorizing about justice can be connected with empirical research in the social sciences. We begin by drawing on some received distinctions between ideal and non-ideal approaches to theorizing justice along several different dimensions, showing how non-ideal approaches are needed to address normative aspects of real-world problems and to provide practical guidance. We argue that there are advantages to a transitional approach to justice focusing on manifest injustices, including the fact that it enables us to set (...) aside some reasonable disagreements about justice. The ‘bottom-up’ approach we advocate, for which we borrow Wolff’s term ‘real-world political philosophy’, is an empirically-informed normative analysis that attends to specific, identifiable injustices, and thus is partial, though not isolationist. We illustrate our approach by considering how different models of the nature of disability suggest different kinds of remedy for injustices faced by persons living with disabilities. We reflect on the nature and significance of vulnerabilities, and we assess the role of public opinion in normative theorizing, suggesting a particular significance for the opinions and experiences of marginalized groups. We finally reflect on the relevance of European legal and institutional frameworks for theorizing justice in Europe. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical debates surrounding toleration have revolved around three issues: What is toleration? Should we tolerate and, if so, why? What should be tolerated? These questions are of central importance to social and political thought.

Bioethics has increasingly become a standard part of medical school education and the training of healthcare professionals more generally. This is a promising development, as it has the potential to help future practitioners become more attentive to moral concerns and, perhaps, better moral reasoners. At the same time, there is growing recognition within bioethics that nonideal theory can play an important role in formulating normative recommendations. In this chapter we discuss what this shift toward nonideal theory means for ethical curricula (...) within healthcare education. In particular, we contend that more attention to the particularities of historical and social context needs to be incorporated into bioethics training. To make this argument, we focus on two examples: teaching units on race and medicine and those that focus on stigma and coercion in mental health. For both, we show how a pedagogical approach in which educators focus on social injustice could influence how practitioners engage in ethics in the clinic. This chapter, then, demonstrates what a commitment to nonideal theory can mean practically when it comes to bioethics education. (shrink)

Globalization can undermine as well as enable public discourse at the national, international, and supranational levels. A challenge for political theory is to imagine how a global public realm might be constituted. Because the public realm has flourished in states whose citizens are related under the rule of law, one might ask whether this model of civil association can be extended to a broader and potentially universal context. Given the contingent obstacles to a global state, realizing civil association globally implies (...) a universal confederation of rule‐of‐law states. If the public realm means free deliberation on the laws of a civil association, the ‘global public realm’ would include deliberation at all three levels. (shrink)

The foundations of research ethics are riven with fault lines emanating from a fear that if research is too closely connected to weighty social purposes an imperative to advance the common good through research will justify abrogating the rights and welfare of study participants. The result is an impoverished conception of the nature of research, an incomplete focus on actors who bear important moral responsibilities, and a system of ethics and oversight highly attuned to the dangers of research but largely (...) silent about threats of ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable medical practices and health systems. -/- In For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics, Alex John London defends a conception of the common good that grounds a moral imperative with two requirements. The first is to promote research that generates the information necessary to enable key social institutions to effectively, efficiently, and equitably safeguard the basic interests of individuals. The second is to ensure that research is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects its various contributors' moral claims to be treated as free and equal. Connecting research to the goals of a just social order grounds a framework for assessing and managing research risk that reconciles these requirements and justifies key oversight practices in non-paternalistic terms. Reconceiving research ethics as resolving coordination problems and providing credible assurance that these requirements are being met expands the issues and actors that fall within the purview of the field and provides the foundation for a more unified and coherent approach to domestic and international research. -/- This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. (shrink)

Offering the first developed account of political liberal education, this book combines a thorough analysis of the theoretical groundwork of political liberal education with application-oriented approaches to contemporary educational challenges. Following in depth engagement with the shortcomings of Rawls’ theory and addressing some key objections to neutrality-based restrictions in education, the volume moves on to provide an insightful discussion of topics such as same-sex relations in sex-education, the position of migrant children and the rights of religious parents to determine the (...) education of their children. This book outlines a political liberal account of education which provides a useful contribution to the current debates about liberalism and education in a way unprecedented in the literature on political liberalism so far. It is of interest to anyone working at the intersection of political philosophy and philosophy of education as well as for scholars with a broader interest in how liberalism can respond to the challenges of value pluralism. (shrink)

This book offers a unique and insightful analysis of Western and Middle Eastern concepts of dignity and illustrates them with examples of everyday life. Dignity in the 21st Century - Middle East and West is unique and insightful for a range of reasons. First, the book is co-authored by scholars from two different cultures (Middle East and West). As a result, the interpretations of dignity covered are broader than those in most Western publications. Second, the ambition of the book is (...) to use examples from everyday life and fiction to debate a range of dignity interpretations supplemented by philosophical and theological theories. Thus, the book is designed to be accessible to a general readership, which is further facilitated because it is published with full open access. Third, the book does not defend one superior theory of dignity, but instead presents six Western approaches and one based on the Koran and then asks whether a common essence can be detected. -/- The answer to the question whether a common essence can be detected between the Koranic interpretation of dignity and the main Western theories (virtue, Kant) is YES. The essence can be seen in dignity as a sense of self-worth, which persons have a duty to develop and respect in themselves and a duty to protect in others. The book ends with two recommendations. First, given the 7 concepts of dignity introduced in the book, meaningful dialogue can only be achieved if conversation partners clarify which variation they are using. Second, future collaborations between philosophers and psychologists might be helpful in moving theoretical knowledge on dignity as a sense of self-worth into practical action. The “scourges” of a sense of self-worth and dignity are identified by psychologists as violence, humiliation, disregard and embarrassment. To know more about how these can be avoided from psychologists, is helpful when protecting a sense of self-worth in others. (shrink)

What is the relationship between human rights and the rights of states? Roughly, while cosmopolitans insist that international morality must regard as basic the interests of individuals, statists maintain that the state is of fundamental moral significance. This article defends a relational version of statism. Human rights are ultimately grounded in a relational norm of reciprocal independence and set limits to the exercise of public authority, but, contra the cosmopolitan, the state is of fundamental moral significance. A relational account promises (...) to justify a limited conception of state sovereignty while avoiding the familiar cosmopolitan criticisms of statist accounts. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically analyze Andrea Sangiovanni’s approach to international justice in the EU that he labels Reciprocity-based Internationalism (RBI). I aim to show that the type of reciprocity RBI operates with is not a morally attractive ground for distributive justice because it cannot cope with the case of member states’ inability to reciprocate the production of collective goods at the EU level. I illustrate this with the case of disability. I contrast RBI’s understanding of reciprocity with Christie Hartley’s (...) ‘relationship model’. I argue that the relationship model of reciprocity should characterize the EU, whose two core normative features are fraternity and equal status. The advantage of the relationship model is that it calls for a stronger type of solidarity than RBI does. That not only entails the willingness to support those worse-off members that cannot productively reciprocate other member states’ efforts at the EU level but also calls for a higher redistribution rate within the EU. In the paper, I make three comparisons between RBI’s ‘productive reciprocity’ and the relationship model. The first concerns non-EU-integration-related disadvantages; the second concerns membership cases, such as accession to federations and supranational unions, while the third comparison examines EU-integration-related disadvantages. I argue that the relationship model is a better alternative to RBI in both integration-related and non-integration-related disadvantages. Also, the relationship model can justify accession cases where previous historical ties are relevant, which are outside of the purview of RBI. (shrink)

This paper offers a non-reductivist account of the requirement of legitimate authority in warfare. I first advance a distinction between private and public wars. A war is private where individuals defend their private rights with their private means. A war is public where it either aims to defend public rights or relies on public means. I argue that RLA applies to public war but not private war. A public war waged by a belligerent without legitimate authority involves a form of (...) illegitimate domination of the people. Contra the conventional wisdom that RLA is only an ad bellum principle, I show that RLA is also a vital in bello principle. Relying on the Kantian non-voluntarist account of political authority, I argue that only legitimate states have the right to wage public wars. However, I also contend that RLA is not an absolute requirement, even regarding the justice of public war. Under extremely unfavorable conditions, this requirement may be overridden by weighty considerations in favor of resorting to public war without legitimate authority. In sum, my account of RLA protects ordinary people from illegitimate coercion involved in guerrilla warfare in general yet generates proper permission for responsible, aspiring state founders to secure social justice by coercive means under extraordinary situations. (shrink)

Constitutional democracies unilaterally enact the laws that regulate immigration to their territories. When are would-be migrants to a constitutional democracy morally justified in breaching such laws? Receiving states also typically enact laws that require their existing citizens to participate in the implementation of immigration restrictions. When are the individual citizens of a constitutional democracy morally justified in breaching such laws? In this article, I take up these questions concerning the justifiability of noncompliance with immigration law, focusing on the case of (...) nonviolent—or mere—noncompliance. Dissenting from Javier Hidalgo’s view, I argue that the injustice of an immigration law is insufficient to make mere noncompliance justified. Instead, I contend that only if an immigration law lacks legitimate authority are individuals justified in breaching it, since the subjects of an institution with legitimate authority are under a content-independent moral duty to comply with its rules. I further argue that a constitutional democracy’s regimes of law regulating immigration and requiring its citizens’ participation in implementing these regulations have legitimate authority. Nevertheless, when a particular immigration law is egregiously unjust, its legitimacy is defeated. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to identify the main challenges for global ethics as an academic discipline. This article assesses the moral and practical justifications for common global principles. Individual and institutional responsibility on the supranational level is connected with the standard of human rights and the relational aspects of the globalised world. It also points out two separate problems which global ethics should aim to solve. The first is metatheoretical and methodological and concerns the discipline's lack of self-reflexiveness. (...) The second is essential and concerns the clash of values . Regarding the second problem, the main future challenge of global ethics is to construct a measurement to bring political decisions closer to morality and more strongly connect rights with responsibilities. (shrink)

The human right to health has been established in international law since 1976. However, philosophers have often regarded human rights doctrine as a marginal contribution to political philosophy, or have attempted to distinguish ‘human rights proper’ from ‘aspirations’, with the human right to health often considered as falling into the latter category. Here the human right to health is defended as an attractive approach to global health, and responses are offered to a series of criticisms concerning its demandingness.

This paper develops a novel competition criterion for evaluating institutional schemes. Roughly, this criterion says that one institutional scheme is normatively superior to another to the extent that the former would engender more widespread political competition than the latter. I show that this criterion should be endorsed by both global egalitarians and their statist rivals, as it follows from their common commitment to the moral equality of all persons. I illustrate the normative import of the competition criterion by exploring its (...) potential implications for the scope of egalitarian principles of distributive justice. In particular, I highlight the challenges it raises for global egalitarians' efforts to justify extending the scope of egalitarian justice beyond the state. (shrink)

We share Nelson and Meyer's (2005) frustration with the dearth of meaningful debate evidenced in the President's Council on Bioethics's (PCB's) Report, Human Cloning and Human Dignity. But we disag...

This article contextualises current debates over human rights and transnational corporations. More specifically, we begin by first providing the background to John Ruggie's appointment as 'Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises'. Second, we provide a brief discussion of the rise of transnational corporations, and of their growing importance in terms of global governance. Third, we introduce the notion of human rights, and note some difficulties associated therewith. Fourth, we (...) refer to Ruggie's scholarly work on 'embedded liberalism', the 'global public domain' and 'social constructivism'. Following this, we refer to the other five papers contained in this "Journal of Business Ethics" special issue, 'Spheres of Influence/Spheres of Responsibility: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights', and consider some of the potential obstacles to Ruggie's recent suggestion that a 'new consensus' has formed, or is forming, around his 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' framework. We conclude by raising questions regarding the processes of consensus-building around, and the operationalisation of, Ruggie's 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' framework. (shrink)

The Kyoto Protocol on global warming has provoked great controversy in part because it calls for heavier burdens on wealthy countries than on developing countries in the effort to control climate change. The U.S. Senate voted unanimously to oppose any agreement that does not require emissions reductions in low-income countries. The ethics of this position are examined in this paper which shows that there are good moral reasons for supporting the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol. Such a conclusion follows easily (...) from considerations of distributive justice but can also be supported by more narrowly self-interested arguments. (shrink)

This article counters the popular misunderstanding that China lacks a conception of human rights in its philosophical heritage. The authors demonstrate that even divergent traditions such as Classical Confucianism and Mohism provide strong and pervasive antecedents for human rights ideology, and both have much to contribute to the contemporary Chinese articulation of human rights theory and practice. The first part of the article shows that traditional Confucian values have the capacity to produce a social environment in which rights outcomes are (...) realized, yet without recourse to the full legal mechanisms of Western claim-rights. The second part of the article reveals that Mohism offers several insights and motivations for contemporary human rights ideology. Thus, the authors substantiate that historic Chinese philosophy supports a meaningful framework for human rights, refuting the claim that human rights is alien to the Chinese way. (shrink)

Must principles of justice be practical? Some political philosophers, the “implementers,” say yes. Others, the “idealists,” say no. Despite this disagreement, the implementers and idealists agree on what “practical” means, subscribing to the “implementation-prediction” conception of practicality. They also seem to agree that principles of so-called “ideal theory” need not be IP-practical. The implementers take this as a reason to reject ideal theory as an approach to principles of justice, while the idealists do not. In this paper, I argue that (...) we should reject the IP conception of practicality. The implementers make a mistake, then, by requiring principles of justice to be IP-practical. But the idealists make a mistake, too, by rejecting in general the requirement that principles of justice be practical. For there is a plausible alternative conception of practicality that political philosophers should accept: the “experimentation-learning” conception. EL-practicality makes for a more realistic and epistemically accessible standard of practicality, and thus should be welcomed by the realistically-inclined implementers. It also preserves a crucial role for ideal theory, so should be welcomed by the idealists, too. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the claim that Rawls’s overlapping consensus is too narrow to allow most mainstream religions’ participation in political discourse. I do so by asking whether religious exclusion is a consequence of belief or action, using conversion as a paradigm case. After concluding that this objection to Rawls is, in fact, defensible, and that the overlapping consensus excludes both religious belief and action, I examine an alternative approach to managing religious pluralism as presented by Adam Smith. I (...) show that Smith’s so-called “marketplace of religions” assumes and encourages religious conversion. I then offer objections to Smith’s approach from Rawls’s point of view, concluding that, while Rawls cannot adequately respond to the Smithian challenge, in the end the two positions are complimentary. (shrink)

Abstract: Debates about the possibility of global democracy and justice are plagued by a fallacious assumption made by all parties. That assumption is that there is a "naturalness" to relations among fellow nationals to which a global demos could never aspire. In fact, nation builders employed a great many tools that mobilized the psychological and moral susceptibilities of individuals in order to create a sense of solidarity out of initially heterogeneous elements. Two such tools are described and then applied to (...) the global sphere: first, appeals to prudence through the sometimes artificial engineering of Hobbesian situations, and second, uses of philosophically inferior but motivationally optimal moral argument. The applicability of these strategies to the global sphere suggests that cosmopolitans would be well advised to examine further the nation builder's toolbox for other devices through which a global demos might be motivated. (shrink)

Human rights and sovereignty are generally construed as disputatious, if not entirely incompatible; the liability of the former constrains the license of the latter. This article challenges the certitude of that notion and argues that democratic, isocratic, and humanistic elements, or what may be thought of as precursors of human rights, are actually embedded in early theories of sovereignty, including what I call Bodin’s hierarchical, Althusius’ confederative, Hobbes’ singular, and Hegel’s progressive/constitutional sovereignty. Despite the differences in governmental structure to which (...) each attaches sovereignty, each disassociates sovereignty from its agents (who does the work of supreme authority) and aligns it to its end (the good of citizens). From them I derive eight theses to ground a democratic, human rights friendly conception of sovereignty, which aids in bridging the divide between human rights advocacy and sovereign defenders. (shrink)

The present paper is a response to Gerald Gaus, who has argued that philosophers should not apply ethics. After a critical evaluation of Gaus's arguments, I present several ways which Sidney Hook has outlined for philosophers to bring their skills to bear fruitfully on public policy matters. Following Hook's list, I offer three of my own suggestions for further ways in which philosophers can positively contribute to the application of ethics and of philosophy generally. Finally, I propose the venue of (...) consultancy as a way in which philosophers can begin to use the many skills they have to offer for confronting the problems people face outside of the academy. (shrink)

This paper probes theories of justice underpinning the concept of equity to deconstruct the term and ascertain how best to equitably support refugee and asylum-seeking youth in U.S. schools. Building upon theories posited by John Rawls, Michael Sandel, and Amartya Sen, the paper aims to extend beyond ideal theory into a theoretical framework of equity with operationalizing potential. Recognizing refugee and asylum-seeking youth as part of the U.S. social contract and therefore bound to government support, the paper represents that equitable (...) education for these young people in our globalized world is essential from both a human rights and economic perspective. Such equitable education will only be achieved when universal minimum standards are offered to everyone and made inclusive, so that all are invited to fully participate as culturally respected learners and knowledge producers in academic spaces. (shrink)

This article proposes 3 principles and 3 imperatives as the philosophical foundations of a global journalism ethics. The central claim is that the globalization of news media requires a radical rethinking of the principles and standards of journalism ethics, through the adoption of a cosmopolitan attitude. The article explains how and why ethicists should construct a global journalism ethics, using a contractualist approach. It then formulates 3 "claims" or principles: the claims of credibility, justifiable consequence, and humanity. The claim of (...) humanity is developed further by the formulation of 3 imperatives: to act as a global agent, to serve world citizens, and to enhance nonparochial understandings. The article concludes by considering some implications of a cosmopolitan attitude for the practice of journalism. (shrink)

This article critiques the ‘withdrawal approach’ to deparochializing global justice and argues for an approach that views ‘departure’ from mainstream theorization as integral to truly critical engagement. It introduces Aakash Singh Rathore’s approach to deparochialization – purportedly founded on Amartya Sen’s The Idea of Justice – as an example of ‘withdrawal approach’ which advocates repudiation of the West-centric and ‘profession-oriented’ academic debate on global justice, and promotion of context-sensitive theories. I argue that Rathore’s ‘withdrawal approach’ springs from an inaccurate reading (...) of Sen’s The Idea of Justice and hence overlooks the critical spirit of Sen’s engagement with the global heritage of ideas and 'critical departure’ from parochial theories. This article further explores three analytical forms of parochialism that dominant theories of global justice may suffer from: epistemic, conceptual and descriptive. Using the case of India’s superrich and their culpability in global poverty, I demonstrate the parochial construction of ‘duties’ in Thomas Pogge’s theory of global poverty. I argue that deparochializing global justice, involving critical engagement with existing theorization along conceptual and descriptive lines, can illuminate a new way forward in global justice research. (shrink)

This article adapts John Rawls’s writings, arguing that past injustice can change what we ought to publicly affirm as the standard of justice today. My approach differs from forward-looking approaches based on alleviating prospective disadvantage and backward-looking historical entitlement approaches. In different contexts, Rawls’s own concern for the ‘social bases of self-respect’ and equal citizenship may require public endorsement of different principles or specifications of the standard of justice. Rawls’s difference principle focuses on the least advantaged socioeconomic group. I argue (...) that a historicized difference principle considers the relative standing of racial, gender, and other historically stigmatized groups; provides their members assurance by weakening incentives to manipulate justice to another group’s advantage; and may result in policies resembling reparations, though justified by forward-looking considerations of self-respect and public assurance. I then examine how disrespectful justifications were historically used to forcibly include indigenous peoples as citizens. While Rawls thinks providing citizens one package of basic liberties signals respect, indigenous self-government could better support self-respect. I invoke Rawlsian international justice, which calls for mutual respect between peoples. Indigenous peoples’ status should reflect their past and persisting peoplehood, providing assurance by weakening incentives to unjustly transform international into domestic contexts. (shrink)

This article illuminates the relationship between John Rawls' and Michael Walzer's accounts of non-domestic justice by tracing its connection to their domestic relationship. More precisely, it places the celebrated positional shifts that characterize the latter within the context of the fundamental justificatory tension between their projects which endures: reason vs trust; and then juxtaposes this justificatory tension and their non-domestic political prescriptions. Such contextualization is important to the clarification of the pair's non-domestic relationship since it enables the observation that despite (...) this enduring justificatory tension these political prescriptions are remarkably similar. (shrink)

This article responds to an article by Francis J. Beckwith that argued that the consistent application of generic liberal principles requires that same-sex marriage not be recognised in civil law. This response demonstrates that Beckwith's article contains a series of interpretative and substantive flaws that render his argument unsuccessful. These relate to a misinterpretation of core liberal principles and a sidestepping of the matter of undue bias against same-sex partners. In correcting these flaws I tentatively propose a Voltairean argument in (...) favour of same-sex civil marriage for those citizens with moral qualms about same-sex relationships derived from their reasonable comprehensive doctrine. (shrink)

This paper defends the pertinence of global justice in the contemporary world. It accepts, for the sake of argument, Nagel's view that matters of justice arise only when political authority is asserted or exercised and, connectedly, his rejection of the cosmopolitan thesis. However, it challenges his conclusion that considerations of justice do not apply beyond the state. It argues that on any plausible account of the relationship between authority and justice international institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation, are now (...) authoritative in the right way to justify their evaluation from the point of view of justice. (shrink)