While the energy transition is needed more than ever, for some agents it brings significant losses. This article investigates whether fossil fuel owners could refer to promises to avoid having their assets stranded. It explains how authors, in the context of just transitions, have argued for the normative relevance of Rawlsian legitimate expectations, which refer to promissory entitlements. However, it argues that the normative relevance of promises towards fossil fuel owners is limited, because there are only few promises about what (...) will be permissible in the future and because these promises should be just before they can lead to entitlements. (shrink)

To realize the climate transition and other large societal transitions in a fair way, expectations should be considered. However, the literature has only focused on the claims that already existing expectations bring about, without indicating which rights there are to be actively provided with expectations. This article addresses this gap by investigating the rights of private agents, individuals and companies, to be informed about future climate regulations. It argues that private agents have an interest in being informed because this enables (...) them to make and execute plans. Its value depends on how general the relevant regulations are and the costs of processing the information and responding to it. This interest grounds duties on the part of governments to provide information about the general directions of future policies because of their capacities to inform about the regulations they will introduce and their special responsibilities towards the agents over whom they exercise a right to rule. When future regulations are uncertain, they should provide information about the likelihood of the possible scenarios and the circumstances on which this depends and introduce an element of stability in future policies, which should be balanced with the value of flexibility. (shrink)

Statelessness and displacement represent nothing short of a loss of place, the violation of rights and international norms, threat to safety and belonging, and severely limits access to law and citizenship. Social work must leverage and sustain an ethical standpoint as a critical counterpoint to the increasing moral and political urgency of statelessness. However, traditional and normative social work ethics operate at a level of abstraction that do not engage sufficiently with the realpolitik of statelessness. This paper critically engages with (...) moral questions concerning displacement and statelessness by engaging the philosophy of James Tully and Christine Korsgaard. This engagement enables connections between agency and notions of democratic constitutionalism where people have the right to call into and contest relations of governance that oppress them, through various means such as advocacy and activism. We present a reconsideration of established ethical understandings by arguing for the place of public philosophy and the constitution of the self as key to social work theory and practice in response to statelessness and displacement. Korsgaard’s work on normativity and agency, and Tully’s notion of democratic constitutionalism provide a rich and original contribution to social work ethics that will be articulated for social work theory and practice. (shrink)