As the twentieth century begins to draw to a close, Europe is undergoing a process of political transformation whose outcome cannot be predicted with confidence, in part because the process is being driven by two powerful but conflicting tendencies. The first is the movement toward greater economic and political union among the countries of Western Europe. The second is the pressure, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, for the countries of Eastern Europe to fragment along ethnic (...) and communal lines. (shrink)

The associative argument for political obligation has taken an important place in the debate on political obligation. Proponents of this view argue that an obligation to obey the government arises out of ties of affiliation among individuals who share the same citizenship. According to them, relationships between compatriots constitute basic reasons for action in the same way in which relationships between family members or friends do. As critics point out, this account of the normative force of relationships has counterintuitive implications: (...) if relationships between people sharing the same citizenship make up basic reasons for action, then relationships between people sharing other attributes, for example, relationships between racists or sexists form basic reasons for action too. In this essay, I pursue a modified version of the associative approach that is not vulnerable to this objection. (shrink)

This article explores the justification of states' territorial rights. It starts by introducing three questions that all current theories of territorial rights attempt to answer: how to justify the right to settle, the right to exclude, and the right to settle and exclude with reference to a particular territory. It proposes a ‘permissive’ theory of territorial rights, arguing that the citizens of each state are entitled to the particular territory they collectively occupy, if and only if they are also politically (...) committed to the establishment of a global political authority realizing just reciprocal relations. The article is developed by introducing some key features of the permissive theory and by explaining how such an account addresses the questions of settlement, exclusion and particularity in ways that significantly improve on existing rival accounts (most prominently: acquisition theories, legitimacy-based theories and nationalist theories). (shrink)

In this paper I outline a theory of legitimacy that grounds the state’s right to rule on a natural duty not to harm others. I argue that by refusing to enter the state, anarchists expose those living next to them to the dangers of the state of nature, thereby posing an unjust threat. Since we have a duty not to pose unjust threats to others, anarchists have a duty to leave the state of nature and enter the state. This duty (...) correlates to a claim-right possessed by those living next to them, who also have a right to act in self-defence to enforce this obligation. This argument, if successful, would be particularly attractive, as it provides an account of state legitimacy without importing any normative premises that libertarians would reject. (shrink)

Within the literature in green political theory on global environmental threats one can often find dissatisfaction with liberal theories of justice. This is true even though liberal cosmopolitans regularly point to global environmental problems as one reason for expanding the scope of justice beyond the territorial limits of the state. One of the causes for scepticism towards liberal approaches is that many of the most notable anti-cosmopolitan theories are also advanced by liberals. In this paper, I first explain why one (...) of the strongest expressions of liberal anti-cosmopolitanism cannot simply be dismissed because it may fail to support desired environmental ends. The political conception of justice represents one of the most important challenges to cosmopolitanism generally and is thus a serious challenge to viewing global environmental problems in terms of cosmopolitan justice. Second, I will show through the case of anthropogenic global warming that the political conception of justice under current conditions does have clear cosmopolitan implications despite its proponents' claims. (shrink)

Compelling research in international relations and international political economy on global warming suggests that one part of any meaningful effort to radically reverse current trends of increasing green house gas (GHG) emissions is shared policies among states that generate costs for such emissions in many if not most of the world’s regions. Effectively employing such policies involves gaining much more extensive global commitments and developing much stronger compliance mechanism than those currently found in the Kyoto Protocol. In other words, global (...) warming raises the prospect that we need a global form of political authority that could coordinate the actions of states in order to address this environmental threat. This in turn suggests that any serious effort to mitigate climate change will entail new limits on the sovereignty of states. In this book I focus on the normative question of whether or not we have clear moral reasons to bind ourselves together in such a supranational form of political association. I argue that one can employ familiar liberal arguments for the moral legitimacy of political order at the state level to show that we do have a duty to support such a global political project. Even if one adopts the premises employed by the most influential forms of liberal scepticism to the ideas of global political and distributive justice, such as those advanced by John Rawls and Thomas Nagel, it is clear that the threat of global warming has expanded the scope of justice. We now have a global and demanding duty of justice to create the political conditions that would allow us to collectively address our impact on the Earth’s atmosphere. (shrink)

Under what conditions, if any, do those the law addresses have a moral duty or obligation to obey it simply because it is the law? In this essay, I identify five general approaches to carrying out this task, and offer a somewhat detailed discussion of one or two examples of each approach. The approaches studied are: relational‐role approaches that appeal to the fact that an agent occupies the role of member in the political community; attempts to ground the duty to (...) obey the law in individual consent or fair play; natural duty approaches; instrumental approaches; and philosophical anarchism, an approach that denies that most subjects of contemporary states have a duty to obey the law simply in virtue of its status as such. (shrink)

What justifies political power? Most philosophers argue that consent or democracy are important, in other words, it matters how power is exercised. But this book argues that outcomes primarily matter to justifying power.

How should international law’s role in determining international distributive outcomes, economic and otherwise, affect how we think about its legitimate authority? Domestic institutions’ legitimate authority in respect of distribution derives in large part from their concurrent roles in enabling security and coordination. Internationally, by contrast, functional disaggregation means that distribution must be legitimised in its own right. I begin by distinguishing the phenomenon of Distributive International Law, on which my argument focuses. I next introduce a number of wide instrumental accounts (...) of legitimate authority, including Rawls’ Natural Duty account, Buchanan’s metacoordination view, and Williams’ political realism, showing how each understands legitimacy as an institution-level characteristic, allowing an institution’s success in one area to support its legitimacy in another where it may be less successful. This poses the question of how we distinguish amongst distinct institutions, which I answer by reference to the causal and constitutive (in)dependence amongst activities. This approach explains why distributive legitimacy does not arise as a separate question domestically: we cannot distinguish the state’s security and coordination activities from its distributive activities, so if the former are legitimate then so, ipso facto, are the latter. Internationally, by contrast, these mutual dependencies are limited, requiring that the legitimacy of distribution be established independently of other roles that international law plays. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

The debate on ideal theory focuses mainly on whether it can provide a long-term target and a metric for assessing the justice of different institutional arrangements in non-ideal theory. Both critics and defenders of ideal theory typically overlook the role it plays in a model of fairness that can restrict the range of permissible arrangements under non-ideal conditions. In this paper, I explain ideal theory’s fairness role and its part in ensuring an institutional structure that benefits everyone in a society. (...) Critics of ideal theory therefore cannot reject it as simply useless. But I consider how they can question the attractiveness of an ideal-theory-based fairness constraint on non-ideal theory. (shrink)

According to a prominent argument, citizens in unjust societies have a duty to resist injustice. The moral and political principles that ground the duty to obey the law in just or nearly just conditions, also ground the duty to resist in unjust conditions. This argument is often applied to a variety of unjust conditions. In this essay, I critically examine this argument, focusing on conditions involving institutionally entrenched and socially normalised injustice. In such conditions, the issue of citizens’ duties to (...) resist is complicated. I conclude by considering how my discussions may clarify a contemporary problem about engaging in resistance to aid potential migrants who have been turned away by states in accordance with widely accepted rules. (shrink)

The article examines whether realist theory should adopt a philosophical anarchist position concerning political obligation. The conclusions are mixed. Drawing on a distinction between strong and weak theories of political obligation (in the terminology of the paper, strong theories are committed to morality-based theorizing while weak theories depart from it), the article argues that philosophical anarchism and realist theory are natural allies against strong theories of political obligation but they must part company when it comes to weak theories because it (...) is exactly their departure from morality-based theorizing that can make weak theories especially appealing to realists. In addition, two further objections can be raised against philosophical anarchism on realist grounds: first, philosophical anarchists are drawn to undesirably sweeping conclusions about the non-existence of legitimate political authority or the extreme scarcity of genuine political relations by their Kantian or Lockean background assumptions and, second, Simmons seems to have an implicit weak theory of political obligation which could be, ironically, much more appealing to realists than his overall Lockean anarchism or his sweeping criticism of weak theories. All in all, can a realist be an anarchist? Probably, but definitely not on philosophical anarchist grounds. (shrink)

Luego de la Conquista del Desierto, el Estado argentino impuso su ordenamiento institucional a los miembros sobrevivientes de varias comunidades indígenas. De este modo, sus instituciones fueron desplazadas. Esta es una injusticia histórica cuya reparación, en aquel tiempo, requería la restauración de la vigencia de las instituciones indígenas. Sin embargo, no estamos más en 1885 y muchas circunstancias han cambiado. Muchas personas indígenas y no indígenas viven en las mismas ciudades, tienen intereses en las mismas porciones de tierra, e interactúan (...) entre ellos en innumerables formas. Por lo tanto, debe analizarse si, bajo estas condiciones, los reclamos indígenas por recuperar su soberanía siguen siendo válidos. En este trabajo argumentaré que, debido a cambios en las circunstancias, estos reclamos tienen menos fuerza que en el pasado. Por lo tanto, la injusticia histórica no puede ser reparada del mismo modo que en 1885. No obstante, dada la historia de opresión a la que los indígenas han sido sometidos, el sistema institucional de Argentina tiene que ser reformado de manera tal que su aplicación sobre ellos sea legítima. Propongo tres medidas que contribuyen a conseguir dicho objetivo, a saber, el autogobierno para asuntos internos, la representación en el Senado y el cambio institucional por mayoría simple. -/- After the Conquest of the Desert, the State of Argentina forcibly imposed its institutional system over the surviving members of several indigenous communities. In that way, their institutions were ousted. The reparation of this historical injustice, at that time, required the reversion of the indigenous institutions. However, we are not in 1885 anymore, and several circumstances have changed. Many indigenous and non-indigenous persons live in the same cities, have interests in similar portions of land, and interact with each other in an infinite number of ways. Therefore, it should be assessed whether indigenous claims for their sovereignty to be restored are still valid. In this paper, I argue that, owed to changing circumstances, these claims have less normative force than they had in the past. Therefore, those injustices cannot be redressed in the same way as in 1885. However, I argue that due to the history of oppression indigenous people have suffered, the Argentinian institutional system has to be reformed so that its application over them not being illegitimate. I propose three measures to achieve this aim: self-government over internal affairs, indigenous representatives in the Senate, and institutional change by a simple majority of votes. (shrink)

This paper studies the lessons of principled anti-corruption experts who dared to fulfill their duty of justice in highly corrupt societies, through the true story of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Finance Minister of Nigeria. My thesis is that when principled anti-corruption experts are epistemic trespassers, they show moral incompetence. Okonjo-Iweala shows moral incompetence in two ways: she misread the opposition to her strategies and misled other honest reformers. Both actions bungled her efforts to eradicate corruption inasmuch as they hindered the (...) possibility of finding successful anti-corruption policies. Okonjo-Iweala’s moral incompetence is, I argue, the result of her epistemic trespassing that led her to act like an expert in an environment where she was not. I conclude that, in highly corrupt societies, principled anti-corruption experts should embrace moral humility, stop thinking that they are experts, and act more like students, asking questions and not rushing to think that they understand the answers. (shrink)

The principle of non-maleficence, primum non nocere, has deep roots in the history of moral philosophy, being endorsed by John Stuart Mill, W. D. Ross, H. L. A. Hart, Karl Popper and Bernard Gert. And yet, this principle is virtually absent from current debates on social justice. This article suggests that non-maleficence is more than a moral principle; it is also a principle of social justice. Part I looks at the origins of non-maleficence as a principle of ethics, and medical (...) ethics in particular. Part II introduces the idea of non-maleficence as a principle of social justice. Parts III and IV define the principle of justice as non-maleficence in terms of its scope and coherence, while Part V argues that the motivation of not doing harm makes this principle an alternative to two well-established paradigms in the literature on social justice: justice as mutual advantage (David Gauthier) and justice as impartiality (Brian Barry). (shrink)

To many, the idea of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) killing human beings is grotesque. Yet critics have had difficulty explaining why it should make a significant moral difference if a human combatant is killed by an AWS as opposed to being killed by a human combatant. The purpose of this paper is to explore the roots of various deontological concerns with AWS and to consider whether these concerns are distinct from any concerns that also apply to long-distance, human-guided weaponry. We (...) suggest that at least one major driver of the intuitive moral aversion to lethal AWS is that their use disrespects their human targets by violating the martial contract between human combatants. On our understanding of this doctrine, service personnel cede a right not to be directly targeted with lethal violence to other human agents alone. Artificial agents, of which AWS are one example, cannot understand the value of human life. A human combatant cannot transfer his privileges of targeting enemy combatants to a robot. Therefore, the human duty-holder who deploys AWS breaches the martial contract between human combatants and disrespects the targeted combatants. We consider whether this novel deontological objection to AWS forms the foundation of several other popular yet imperfect deontological objections to AWS. (shrink)

The paper is organized around two major, but closely interconnected goals. First, the paper’s principal aim is to offer a normative theory of political obligations that is based on certain insights of philosophical anarchism, theories of associative obligations and political realism. Second, the paper aims to offer a normative theoretical framework to examine political obligations in contemporary non-democratic contexts that does not vindicate non-democratic regimes and that does not exclude political obligations from the terrain of moral normativity. The theory of (...) political obligations this paper proposes can be briefly summarized as follows: political obligations are duties of compliance with the political authority claims of those who exercise political power. Their primary ground is membership. The mere fact of membership has moral weight in its own right and it is also inseparably embedded into a rich context of moral reasons for action that includes general reasons; ad hoc reasons; regime-specific reasons applying to every subject; and regime-specific offices that attribute specific responsibilities to individuals and groups. This rich context of typical moral reasons plays an important role in deciding what needs to be done, all things considered, with respect to the political authority claims. This account attempts to describe compliance in terms of genuine political obligations and also claims to be a plausible and general account. It does not claim to be a theoretically coherent moral justification for political obligations, however, just a theoretically coherent account of the varied sources and limitations of political obligations. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the morality of two types of national security electronic surveillance (SIGINT) programs: the analysis of communication “metadata” and dragnet searches for keywords in electronic communication. The chapter develops a standard for assessing coercive government action based on respect for the autonomy of inhabitants of liberal states and argues that both types of SIGINT can potentially meet this standard. That said, the collection of metadata creates opportunities for abuse of power, and so judgments about the trustworthiness and competence (...) of the government engaging in the collection must be made in order to decide whether metadata collection is justified in a particular state. Further, the moral standard proposed has a reflexive element justifying adversary states’ intelligence collection against one another. Therefore, high-tech forms of SIGINT can only be justified at the cost of justifying cruder versions of signals intelligence collection practiced by a state’s less-advanced adversaries. (shrink)

I argue that legitimacy discourses serve a gatekeeping function. They give practitioners telic standards for riding herd on social practices, ensuring that minimally acceptable versions of the practice are implemented. Such a function is a necessary part of implementing formalized social practices, especially including law. This gatekeeping account shows that political philosophers have misunderstood legitimacy; it is not secondary to justice and only necessary because we cannot agree about justice. Instead, it is a necessary feature of actual human social practices, (...) which must be implemented via practitioners' discretion in changing contexts. (shrink)

This article examines John Simmons’ Lockean theory of territorial rights and defends the superiority of the rival nationalist theory that he rejects. It begins by arguing that all philosophical acc...

Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state. But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are unjust or do not e...

In this essay, I examine the compatibility of Kantian cosmopolitanism and patriotism. In response to recent literature, I first argue that in order to discuss this issue fruitfully, one should distinguish between three different forms of patriotism and be careful to make clear when patriotism is obligatory, permissible, or prohibited. I then show that Kantians can defend the view that civic patriotism is a duty, but that attempts to also establish nationalist patriotism and trait-based patriotism as Kantian duties fail. Showing (...) that civic patriotism is a duty does not by itself show that it is compatible with cosmopolitanism, however, and I therefore examine the relationship between different duties in more detail, arguing that there is no conflict of duties here. Finally, I argue that Kantianism provides even a bit of room for nationalist and trait-based patriotism to count as having moral worth, although this room is very narrowly circumscribed. (shrink)

In a morally non-ideal legal system, how can law bind its subjects? How can the fact of a norm’s legality make it the case that practical reason is bound by that norm? Moreover, in such circumstances, what is the extent and character of law’s bindingness? I defend here an answer to these questions. I present a non-ideal theory of legality’s ability to produce binding reasons for action. It is not a descriptive account of law and its claims, it is a (...) normative theory of legal reasoning for particular social circumstances. The approach is, somewhat like Raz’s influential account, instrumental in character. Yet, it denies that the morally binding legal norms are, in whole or part, exclusionary reasons for the responsible subject. Law’s instrumentality must be given an alternative characterization. (shrink)

This essay argues that there can be a duty to obey the law when it is produced by the evolutionary forces at work in the customary and common law. Human beings' inherent epistemic limitations mean that they must rely on the trial and error learning built into the common law process to discover rules that facilitate peaceful social interaction. Hence, a duty to obey the law produced by the common law process can arise from individuals' natural duty to promote social (...) peace. This argument cannot be extended to ground political obligation. It does not give rise to a duty to obey the state. (shrink)

Theories of political authority divide naturally into those that locate the source of states' authority in the history of states' interactions with their subjects and those that locate it in structural (or functional) features of states (such as the justice of their basic institutions). This paper argues that purely structuralist theories of political authority (such as those defended by Kant, Rawls, and contemporary “democratic Kantians”) must fail because of their inability to solve the boundary problem—namely, the problem of locating the (...) boundaries between different states' domains of authority in the natural or intuitive places. (shrink)

Much of the debate concerning political obligation deals with the question of which, if any, moral principles could make obedience to the directives of the government a matter of obligation. What makes political obligation political has not received attention in the literature on the topic. In this article I argue that the lack of systematic reflection on what makes political obligation political is responsible for the failure of a number of influential theories of political obligation. I demonstrate this failure using (...) the consent theory of political obligation as my major example. I conclude my analysis by formulating some positive conditions that a successful principle of political obligation should satisfy. (shrink)

The word ‘cosmopolitan’, which derives from the Greek word kosmopolitês (‘citizen of the world’), has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moral and socio political philosophy. The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, do (or at least can) belong to a single community, and that this community should be cultivated. Different versions of cosmopolitanism envision this community in different ways, some focusing on (...) political institutions, others on moral norms or relationships, and still others focusing on shared markets or forms of cultural expression. The philosophical interest in cosmopolitanism lies in its challenge to commonly recognized attachments to fellow citizens, the local state, parochially shared cultures, and the like. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

La pregunta acerca de por qué las personas deben obedecer el derecho introduce uno de los temas más complejos y discutidos de la filosofía política y jurídica contemporáneas. Entre las diversas respuestas ofrecidas en la literatura científica, Rawls formuló la teoría del deber natural de apoyar y promover las instituciones justas. El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer un análisis crítico de esta propuesta y mostrar cómo se podrían superar algunas de sus debilidades mediante un enfoque que enfatice la importancia (...) de preservar un esquema social beneficioso que ofrezca un marco de posibilidades para el desarrollo moral de las personas. (shrink)

The legislature and the judiciary have been a constant focus of contemporary political philosophy. However, the executive – ‘the government’ itself – has been comparatively neglected. Today, this is changing with a well-spring of new work that bears upon what we might call the ideal of ‘good governance’, that is, how governments (and/or their agents) should exercise their powers. This review paper begins by clarifying the concepts of ‘governance’ and ‘good’ governance (§1). It then highlights five sets of values, working (...) nominally from the most foundational constraints on the exercise of government power to those that should guide the exercise of discretion: legitimacy and rule of law (§2); respect and trustworthiness (§3); efficiency and rationality (§4); public participation and accountability (§5); and the public interest and fiduciary duties (§6). (shrink)

Nationalism is generally associated with sentiments, ideologies, and social movements that involve strong commitments to a nation, conceived as a potentially self-sustaining community of persons bound together by a shared history and culture. Recent empirical and normative discussions have been concentrated on revisionist instances of nationalism, that is, on sentiments, ideologies, and social movements that aim to gain power, political autonomy, or territory for a particular nation. I will here take a somewhat broader view of nationalism, focusing on persons who (...) have a bland and conservative commitment to their own country. Quite content with thestatus quo,these persons view it as legitimate and even admirable that they and their political leaders should show a pre-eminent concern for preserving and enlarging their own collective advantage. Most citizens of the affluent countries – however condescendingly they may regard the revisionist nationalisms of the Serbs, Kurds, Tamils, Irish, and Québécois – are nationalists in this sense, and extreme ones at that. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the question of the scope of justice, in a not unusual distributive, egalitarian, and universalistic framework. Part I outlines some central features of the egalitarian theory of justice I am proposing. According to such a conception, justice is – at least prima facie – immediately universal, and therefore global. It does not morally recognize any judicial boundaries or limits. Part II examines whether, even from a universalistic perspective, there are moral or pragmatic grounds for rejecting (...) or limiting the global scope of justice. In particular, I scrutinize five universalistic objections: (1) the principle of “moral division of labor”; (2) the connection between cooperation and distributive justice; (3) the primacy of democracy; (4) the dangers of a world state; and (5) political‐pragmatic reasons. I intend to show that these objections cannot undermine the strong normative claims of global justice. At the most, political‐pragmatic reasons speak in favor of initially striving for somewhat less, in order to receive more general backing. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to what is currently the most significant criticism of the principle fair play as a basis for political obligations. In a series of cases in which obligations appear to be established by fair play, important scholars contend that the moral principle at work is not fair play but a natural duty of justice to provide essential benefits to other people. Such natural duty accounts strikingly ignore requirements of reciprocity, to make appropriate return for benefits received. (...) In addition, careful examination of possible natural duty explanations of such cases indicates severe difficulties explaining exactly to whom the natural duties in question are owed and why they may require significant costs. (shrink)

This paper contends that the requirement of content independence poses a pressing challenge to natural-duty theories of political obligation, for it is unclear why subjects of a state should not discharge the background natural duty in proper ways other than obeying the law. To demonstrate the force of this challenge, I examine and refute three argumentative strategies to achieve content independence represented in recent notable natural-duty theories: by appealing to the epistemic advantages of the state in discharging a natural duty, (...) by claiming that one’s denial of state authority necessarily poses an unjust threat to other people, and by invoking the consideration of fairness to preempt one’s discretion in discharging a natural duty. My criticisms, I believe, provide sufficient reasons for natural-duty theorists to take the requirement of content independence much more seriously. (shrink)

Normative questions concerning political authority and political obligation are widely seen as central questions of political philosophy. Current global transformations require an innovative response from normative political thinking about these two topics. In light of a concrete example of the supranational forms of authority and obligation that have been and are emerging beyond the national state and beyond the traditional domains of international law, I lay out what has become the standard approach to authority and obligation and indicate why this (...) approach is inadequate in contemporary circumstances. I sketch an alternative approach and suggest how the most promising exemplar of this kind, Habermas’ discourse theory of law and politics, can better deal with the example. Having thus made plausible the advantages of the discourse theory of the alternative approach, I end with an ‘internal’ critique of Habermas’ own recent writings on the global political order. (shrink)

In this paper I criticise an influential version of associative theory of political obligation and I offer a reformulation of the theory in ‘quasi-voluntarist’ terms. I argue that although unable by itself to solve the problem of political obligation, my quasi-voluntarist associative model can play an important role in solving this problem. Moreover, the model teaches us an important methodological lesson about the way in which we should think about the question of political obligation. Finally, I suggest that the quasi-voluntarist (...) associative model is particularly attractive because it manages to combine the main thrust of the traditional associative view with the most attractive feature of transactional theories, while avoiding at the same time the main problems that afflict each of these two approaches. (shrink)

Are the rights, duties, and virtues of citizenship grounded exclusively in considerations of justice, or do some or all of them have other sources? This question is addressed by distinguishing three different accounts of the justification of these rights, duties, and virtues, namely, the justice account, the common-good account, and the equal-membership account. The common-good account is rejected on the grounds that it provides an implausible way of understanding what it is to act as a citizen. It is then argued (...) that the justice account and the equal-membership account provide complementary perspectives that differ in terms of the scope of the duties they ground: the latter offers an analysis of the duties that citizens proper (those with an unconditional right of residence and full political rights) owe to each other, whereas the former provides an analysis of the duties that those who are under the jurisdiction of the same state, whether fellow citizens or not, owe to each other. The article concludes by arguing that the distinction between the justice account and the equal-membership account cuts across the traditional one that is drawn between liberal and republican theories of citizenship. (shrink)

A la vanguardia del debate clásico sobre la justificación del castigo, algunas variantes del republicanismo penal sugieren que tal fundamento debe buscarse en una relación anterior al crimen: en una relación política. Afirman que podemos castigarnos porque pertenecemos, en conciudadanía, a una misma comunidad política. Pero entonces aparece necesariamente la pregunta sobre cómo se justifica el castigo a personas extranjeras. Con referencias al caso argentino, este artículo discute con las explicaciones teóricas ensayadas por Duff y las alternativas de Zedner, Yaffe (...) y Chehtman. El debate, así planteado, parece dirimirse entre fundar la respuesta punitiva en la comunidad entre personas ciudadanas dejando sin orientación normativa a las diversas formas de castigo de las no-ciudadanas o renunciar a una justificación relacional del castigo para todos. Para escapar del dilema, planteo que quienes entiendan que la legitimidad del castigo debe buscarse en algún tipo de relación política preexistente deben redefinir esa relación para que pueda dar cuenta de los diferentes vínculos que nos unen a quienes cohabitamos un mismo territorio político. En lugar de descartar a la membresía política como justificación del reproche penal, sostengo que se puede renunciar a que esa membresía constituya la única justificación posible. Finalmente propongo dos pautas para que una teoría de la justificación del castigo pueda dar cuenta de los diferentes criterios de atribución de la ley penal: el nivel de dependencia y el nivel de participación. (shrink)

In this article I respond to the thoughtful criticisms of my book articulated by Gillian Brock, Thaddeus Metz, and Darrel Moellendorf. Their critical questioning offers me an opportunity to reformulate aspects of the book so that I more accurately say exactly what I had in mind when writing the book. The first section contains a reworking of my definition of poverty to eliminate any ambiguity and demonstrate what kind of comparative judgements the definition allows us to make. The second section (...) looks anew at the multiple moral sources for our obligation to eradicate poverty. In the third section I focus on issues that could hinder attempts at eradicating poverty. One is the lack of accessible knowledge that might be too demanding to acquire. The other is the possibility that all attempts to eradicate poverty might have to be put on hold until oppressive capitalist development has prepared the circumstances for a more socialist distribution of resources. I argue that neither of these concerns should hinder the eradication of poverty. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of how economic and political institutions can limit the applicability of principles of justice even in non-relational cosmopolitan conceptions. It shows that fundamental principles of justice underdetermine fair distributive shares as well as justice -based requirements. It argues that institutions partially constitute the content of justice by determining distributive shares and by resolving indeterminacies about justice -based requirements resulting from strategic interaction and disagreement. In the absence of existing institutions principles of justice might not be (...) applicable for assessing distributions or guiding individual action and institutional design. Hence, accepting a specific cosmopolitan conception of justice is insufficient to settle global distributive questions. (shrink)

There is a story about the connection between the rise of consent theories of political obligation and the fall of natural law theories of political obligation that is popular among political philosophers but nevertheless false. The story is, to put it crudely, that the rise of consent theory in the modern period coincided with, and came as a result of, the fall of the natural law theory that dominated during the medieval period. Neat though it is, the story errs doubly, (...) for it supposes both that consent did not play a key role in natural law theories of political authority offered in the medieval period (a supposition falsified by close inspection of the view of Aquinas, perhaps the paradigmatic natural law theorist) and that natural law theory did not play a key role in the consent theories of political authority offered in the modern period (a supposition falsified by close inspection of the views of Hobbes and Locke, perhaps the paradigmatic consent theorists).Footnotes* I owe thanks to Pat Káin, Paul Weithman, Bob Roberts, and Henry Richardson for instructive criticisms. John Hare was particularly helpful both in criticism and in conversation. I was supported by a fellowship from the Erasmus Institute while this essay was drafted. (shrink)

The first question I discuss in this paper is whether we have a duty of rescue to make our organs available for transplantation after our death, a duty we owe to patients suffering from organ failure. The second question is whether political obligations, in particular the obligation to obey the law, can be derived from natural duties, possibly duties of beneficence. Such duties are normally seen as merely imperfect duties, not owed to anyone. The duty of rescue, however, is a (...) perfect one, mainly because it applies to us when we are in a unique position to provide urgent help to a person in need. The basic idea of a natural duty account of political obligation is that such unique positions can be artificially created by institutionalized coordination schemes. The remaining problem is how any particular coordination scheme could claim our allegiance rather than any other. This problem can be solved in different ways in the organ donation case, and in respect to a limited set of political obligations, mainly negative ones. A natural duty account is best seen as a constitutive part of a multiple principle theory of political obligation. (shrink)

Why, exactly, should we punish children who commit crimes more leniently than adults who commit the same offenses? Gideon Yaffe thinks it is because they cannot vote, and so the strength of their reasons to obey the law is weaker than if they could. They are thus less culpable when they disobey. This argument invites an obvious objection: why not simply enfranchise children, thereby granting them legal reasons that are the same strength as enfranchised adults, and so permitting similarly severe (...) punishment? Yaffe answers this question by arguing that child enfranchisement would objectionably undermine the values of political equality and self-government. This article explores some serious doubts about these arguments. It closes by questioning Yaffe’s reliance on a retributivist theory of punishment, contending that, once we reject retributivism in favor of more humane and productive alternatives, the thesis that child criminals deserve a break—which Yaffe assumes to be undeniably correct—becomes less plausible. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of cosmopolitanism as a corrective virtue of the sort endorsed by Philippa Foot. In particular, it argues that cosmopolitanism corrects a common and dangerous tendency to form overly strong identifications with political entities such as countries, nations, and cultures. The account helps to unify the current heterogeneous collection of cosmopolitan theories, as is illustrated by a discussion of the cultural cosmopolitanism of Jeremy Waldron, and the political cosmopolitanism of Simon Keller. The account also helps distinguish (...) cosmopolitans from their critics, most of whom share the cosmopolitan’s commitment to respect for human rights: for example, liberal patriots, liberal nationalists and liberal culturalists. (shrink)