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Historically, liberal political philosophy has had much to say about who is entitled to nationhood. But it has had rather less to say about how to determine the legitimate territorial boundaries of nations and even less to say about what some such nations, so situated, might owe to others. The object of this paper is to show that the foundational principles of liberalism can generate reasonably determinate solutions to these problems. That is, the very same set of basic rights that (...) liberalism ascribes to all persons is itself sufficient to determine which nations they are members of where those nations’ legitimate legal jurisdictions are located, and what amounts of wealth they each owe or are owed by other nations. (shrink)

The grounds of justice -- "Un pouvoir ordinaire": shared membership in a state as a ground of -- Justice -- Internationalism versus statism and globalism: contemporary debates -- What follows from our common humanity? : the institutional stance, human rights, and nonrelationism -- Hugo Grotius revisited : collective ownership of the Earth and global public reason -- "Our sole habitation" : a contemporary approach to collective ownership of the earth -- Toward a contingent derivation of human rights -- Proportionate use (...) : immigration and original ownership of the Earth -- "But the earth abideth for ever" : obligations to future generations -- Climate change and ownership of the atmosphere -- Human rights as membership rights in the global order -- Arguing for human rights : essential pharmaceuticals -- Arguing for human rights : labor rights as human rights -- Justice and trade -- The way we live now -- "Imagine there's no countries" : a reply to John Lennon -- Justice and accountability : the state -- Justice and accountability : the World Trade Organization. (shrink)

This essay makes a plea for the relevance of moral considerations in debates about immigration. It offers a standpoint that demonstrates why one should think of immigration as a moral problem that must be considered in the context of global justice.

Writing in EIA 22, no. 1, Mathias Risse presented a novel way to think about the problem of immigration in the context of global justice, adopting the standpoint of the common ownership of the earth. The following Exchange is in response to that essay.

This chapter outlines the main ideas of my book National responsibility and global justice. It begins with two widely held but conflicting intuitions about what global justice might mean on the one hand, and what it means to be a member of a national community on the other. The first intuition tells us that global inequalities of the magnitude that currently exist are radically unjust, while the second intuition tells us that inequalities are both unavoidable and fair once national responsibility (...) is allowed to operate. This conflict might be resolved either by adopting a cosmopolitan theory of justice (which leaves no room for national responsibility) or by adopting a ‘political’ theory of justice (which denies that questions of distributive justice can arise beyond the walls of the sovereign state). Since neither resolution is satisfactory, the chapter defends the idea of national responsibility and proposes a new theory of global justice, whose main elements are the protection of basic human rights worldwide, and fair terms of interaction between independent political communities. (shrink)