Contemporary liberalism and republicanism present clearly distinct programs for domestic politics, but the same cannot be said when it comes to global politics: the burgeoning literature on global republicanism has reproduced the divide between cosmopolitan and associational views familiar from long-standing debates among liberal egalitarians. Should republicans be cosmopolitans? Despite presence of a range of views in the literature, there is an emerging consensus that the best answer is no. This paper aims to resist the emerging consensus, arguing that republicans (...) should be cosmopolitans. The considerations offered against cosmopolitanism generally rest on an incomplete understanding of the relationship between economic inequality or poverty on the one hand, and domination on the other. Insofar as republicans agree that promoting freedom from domination should be our central political aim, they should regard the reduction of economic inequality and poverty at home and abroad as equally pressing. (shrink)

Name any valued human trait—intelligence, wit, charm, grace, strength—and you will find an inexhaustible variety and complexity in its expression among individuals. Yet we insist that such diversity does not provide grounds for differential treatment at the most basic level. Whatever merit, blame, praise, love, or hate we receive as beings with a particular past and a particular constitution, we are always and everywhere due equal respect merely as persons. -/- But why? Most who attempt to answer this question appeal (...) to the idea that all human beings possess an intrinsic dignity and worth—grounded in our capacities, for example, to reason, reflect, or love—that raises us up in the order of nature. Andrea Sangiovanni rejects this predominant view and offers a radical alternative. -/- To understand our commitment to basic equality, Humanity without Dignity argues that we must begin with a consideration not of equality but of inequality. Rather than search for a chimerical value-bestowing capacity possessed to an equal extent by each one of us, we ought to ask: Why and when is it wrong to treat others as inferior? Sangiovanni comes to the conclusion that our commitment to moral equality is best explained by a rejection of cruelty rather than a celebration of rational capacity. He traces the impact of this fundamental shift for our understanding of human rights and the norms of anti-discrimination that underlie it. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

In recent public and activist debates, threats to the sustainability of the global ecosystem, such as climate change, have increasingly been posed in terms that link the impact on human well-being to questions of rights. Environmental human rights are emerging in national and international legal practice and have been invoked by environmental political theorists seeking to explicate and justify obligations to protect and sustain the environment and to secure justice for both contemporary communities and future generations. This chapter addresses three (...) key questions in order to unpack the concept of environmental human rights: Why adopt a human rights approach? How have environmental human rights been conceived? and What does an account of environmental human rights entail for rights holders and duty bearers? (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between climate change and human rights. It argues that climate change is unjust, in part, because it jeopardizes several core rights – including the right to life, the right to food and the right to health. It then argues that adopting a human rights framework has six implications for climate policies. To give some examples, it argues that this helps us to understand the concept of “dangerous anthropogenic interference” (UNFCCC, Article 2). In addition to this, (...) it argues that if we adopt a human rights framework then any climate policies should also honour human rights, and so mitigation policies, for example, should not compromise people’s enjoyment of their human rights. A third implication, I argue, is that in addition to duties of mitigation and adaptation there will also be – if rights are violated – duties of compensation too. (shrink)

In this masterful work, both an illumination of Kant's thought and an important contribution to contemporary legal and political theory, Arthur Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant's political philosophy. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant's ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant's views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today.

Ecological sustainability is essential in order to ensure human flourishing and human freedom.1 There is a scientific consensus regarding the anthropogenic origin of the activities leading to diffe...

The interstate highway system and environmental are seldom discussed conjointly in works on climate and sustainability programs. In this essay I employ a metaphor, likening the interstate system to environments, to illustrate a cognitive shortcoming, a failure of imagination, by the organisms found in both. I argue that several failures of the imagination combine to constitute a failure to be aware of the limitations of our situations and the parameters set by climatological considerations. However, by re-engaging with our environment through (...) the use of imaginative exercises, we can become aware of our surrounding in terms of both geographic and organismic limitations of our environment. Furthermore, to develop these sustainable policies, we can employ Kantian ethical deliberations that engage our sense of imagination to become ?situationally aware? of our place in the climates we inhabit and of others members of our environment. (shrink)

This article makes two arguments. First, that social justice constitutes an inherent part of the conception of sustainable development that the World Commission on Environment and Development outlined in Our Common Future. The primary goal of the Commission was to reconcile physical sustainability, need satisfaction and equal opportunities, within and between generations. Sustainable development is what defines this reconciliation. Second, it is argued that this conception of sustainable development is broadly compatible with liberal theories of justice. Sustainable development, however, goes (...) beyond liberal theories of justice in many respects. It is based on three assumptions, which are for the most part ignored in liberal theories: an accelerating ecological interdependence, historical inequality in past resource use, and the 'growth of limits'. These assumptions create a conflict between intra- and intergenerational justice, which is ignored in liberal theories, but which sustainable development tries to solve. It does so by imposing duties on developed countries that goes beyond liberal demands, and by abandoning the focus 'solely on protection' that dominates non-anthropocentric approaches to environmental sustainability. (shrink)

The need for ecological sustainability has been translated into different indicators such as the ‘ecological footprint’ and the ‘planetary boundaries’. Analysis of both concepts concludes that the planet is currently undergoing a period of ecological unsustainability. For this reason, ecologists argue that various limits are required in order to move to a path of sustainability. The implementation of such limits has mostly been analysed from the perspectives of environmental rights and environmental justice, however research in terms of freedom is (surprisingly) (...) still lacking. In what way do such limits have an impact on freedom? I will argue that there are two different ways to analyse the relation between freedom and ecological limits: on the one hand, freedom is often referred to as being in competition with ecological sustainability and the limits it is required to impose, and, on the other hand, the impact on an individual’s freedom due to ecological catastrophe if strict limits are not implemented. Accepting that freedom is an important topic regarding ecological challenges, I ask which conception of freedom is better suited to answer this challenge as well as the required implementation of ecological limits. I compare and confront the closely linked conceptions of freedom as non-frustration and the closely linked conception of non-limitation, as well as non-interference and the conception of freedom as non-domination. After presenting these conceptions I examine their relationship with ecological limits. The conclusion is that the conception of freedom as non-domination is better placed to justify ecological limits necessary to promote an ecologically sustainable future. (shrink)

Sustainable practices are commended to us both out of prudential regard for our own future and out of principled concern for the ‘right to life’ of endangered species, ecosystems and ways of life and for intergenerational justice among our own kind. The larger point of the ‘sustainability ethic’ might be more political, however. Insisting that any practice we adopt now must be sustainable into the indefinite future constitutes an institutional check preventing us from taking unfair advantage of our privileged temporal (...) position vis‐a‐vis our successors. (shrink)

H. L. A. Hart and the "Open Texture" of Language tries to clarify the writings of both Hart and Friedrich Waismann on "open texture". In Waismann's work, "open texture" referred to the potential vagueness of words under extreme (hypothetical) circumstances. Hart's use of the term was quite different, and his work has been misunderstood because those differences were underestimated. Hart should not be read as basing his argument for judicial discretion on the nature of language; primarily, he was putting forward (...) a policy argument for why rules should be applied in a way which would require that discretion. (shrink)

Sustainable practices are commended to us both out of prudential regard for our own future and out of principled concern for the ‘right to life’ of endangered species, ecosystems and ways of life and for intergenerational justice among our own kind. The larger point of the ‘sustainability ethic’ might be more political, however. Insisting that any practice we adopt now must be sustainable into the indefinite future constitutes an institutional check preventing us from taking unfair advantage of our privileged temporal (...) position vis‐a‐vis our successors. (shrink)

In recent decades, neo-republican philosophers have developed a theory of freedom as non-domination, which, they claim, is conceptually and analytically distinct from the “liberal” concept of freedom as non-interference. However, neo-republicans have intervened in constitutional debate almost exclusively in relation to structural issues of institutional competence, and have made little impact on the analytical jurisprudence of constitutional rights. While judicial review seems ill equipped to respond to the distributive dimensions of republican freedom, republicans like Richard Bellamy have argued that the (...) whole edifice of countermajoritarian, strong-form judicial review is itself an affront to freedom as non-domination properly understood. Republican freedom, in this lens, is defined structurally, procedurally and politically rather than in relation to a definite set, concept or theory of rights that is put outside and beyond politics. And partly for this reason, there has been little commentary concerning how the theory of freedom as non-domination might inform constitutional-rights doctrine. This article will argue, first, that the neo-republican view can usefully inform constitutional-rights doctrine notwithstanding republican reservations concerning judicial power. Second, it will propose a number of specific ways in which the jurisprudence of constitutional rights might account for the central concerns of the republican idea. (shrink)

This paper examines how the intercultural conception of human rights, fueled by the modes of reciprocal recognition associated with Hegel’s social philosophy, draws on traditional understandings of human dignity while avoiding the essentialism associated with those understandings. Part 1 summarizes core elements of an intercultural theory of human rights while addressing the general question of how that theory accommodates an understanding of the relationship of human dignity and human rights. Part 2 presents the intercultural approach as committed to a view (...) of human dignity focused on the intrinsic worth of individuals, but understood, not—with Kant—as an anthropologically inherent property, but as one forged in relations of intersubjective recognition. Part 3, critically engaging arguments of C Beitz and J Habermas, claims that an intercultural approach entails a status-based conception of human dignity, one that construes the latter, not as a metaphysically conceived inherent quality, but as a function of membership in a social order supportive of both liberal right claims and a republican commitment to rights systems generally. Drawing on the work of Hegel and critically engaging the position of A Sangiovanni, Part 4 construes human dignity in terms of a doctrine of human rights expressive of a common humanity, one understood, however, not as an essential attribute of human beings, but in terms of a globally realized legal-political order whose members are dispositionally committed to the worth of all members of the human community and the value of human community itself. Critically appropriating the work of H Arendt for the intercultural theory, Part 5 considers the centrality of actual politics to a dignitarian account of human rights. Part 6 construes human dignity, again with Kant, in terms of the principle of autonomy, but one understood, not abstractly, but—engaging Pico della Mirandola—as the fallibilistically conceived process of social learning on the part the members of the human community. Part 7 considers how the intercultural view, with the idea of social practice expressive of collective human agency, accommodates a concept of human dignity understood as the “foundation”—nuanced and variegated—of human rights. Part 8 details the specific normativity of an intercultural conception, asserting that despite and even because of its attention to the empirical realities of social, historical, and political life, that conception remains committed, as with essentialist views, to context-transcending norms capable of calling into question actual practices and policies. Here, recourse is had to a concept of recognition understood both as a principle of evaluation and as a social practice encompassing the activity of individuals and groups engaged in the discourse on human rights. (shrink)

Many climate ethicists maintain that climate policy costs should be borne by those who historically emitted the most greenhouse gases. Some theorists have recently argued, however, that actors only became liable for emitting once the emissions breached legitimate legal regulation governing emissions. This paper challenges this view. Focusing on the climate responsibility of states, it argues that even if we assume that legitimate legal regulation is needed to remove excusable ignorance of entitlements to emit or is constitutive of such entitlements, (...) it does not follow that states should be exonerated from responsibility for all pre-legal emitting. This is because the pre-legal emissions may have violated moral duties not to behave recklessly and to promote the emergence of the relevant regulation. The paper closes by noting how grounding liability for emitting in such duties complicates the link between past emissions and liability. (shrink)