In this paper, I assess critically the recent debate on corrective duties across moral and legal philosophy. Two prominent positions have emerged: the Kantian rights-based view (holding that what triggers corrections is a failure to respect others' right to freedom) and the so-called continuity view (correcting means attempting to do what one was supposed to do before). Neither position, I try to show, offers a satisfactory explanation of the ground (why correct?) and content (how to correct?) of corrective duties. In (...) the final section, I suggest that it is probably better to restrict the label “corrective duties” to duties generated by interpersonal wronging. (shrink)

Two problems about rights have received so far little attention. One is the problem of identifying a general value in the practice of rights. The second is to see when, if at all, rights violations wrong the right-holder, in a morally significant sense. In the present essay, I address the first question by investigating the second. I first show that if we commit to the two ideas, common in the contemporary philosophy of rights, that claim-rights always correlate with directed duties (...) and that rights aspire to protect interests of the right-holder, we make it hard to explain why rights violations, in general, wrong right-holders. In the final section, I present what I see as a promising solution to the puzzle. I describe a particular social environment (the society of equals) where interacting with others through rights is indeed valuable because respecting rights communicates that one takes seriously others’ equal moral status. In such a society and only in such a society, I conclude, moral agents are required to treat all rights violations as wrongs perpetrated against the right-holder. (shrink)

I aspire to answer two questions regarding the concept of a corrective duty. The first concerns what it means to wrong others, thus triggering a demand for corrections (the ground question). The second relates to the proper content of corrective duties. I first illustrate how three prominent accounts of corrective duties—the Aristotelian model of correlativity, the Kantian idea that wronging corresponds to the violation of others’ right to freedom, and the more recent continuity view—have failed to answer the two questions (...) satisfactorily. I then introduce my proposal, which holds that we wrong others when we fail to treat their status as moral agents as a source of stringent constraints on our action. I call it the moral neglect account. Once we have identified a common aim of corrective duties (counterbalancing moral neglect), we can fill their content in the various contexts in which wronging has occurred. I conclude by observing that it is not the primary role of corrective justice to assign responsibilities for damage reparations; in fact, requests for compensation make more sense if framed in distributive rather than corrective terms. (shrink)

In this paper, I contrast two approaches to political legitimacy, both influenced by Rawls. One is the classic political liberal picture, according to which a state is legitimate if its “constitutional essentials” could be endorsed by reasonable citizens. The alternative is the idea that what makes a state legitimate is primarily its success at organizing the basic structure in a way that is demonstrably favorable to the governed. Specifically, I suggest that a state is legitimate insofar as it organizes the (...) basic structure in a manner that makes it easier for citizens to behave justly towards one another and adopt autonomous choices. I then move to demonstrate the superiority of this normative impact solution to the problem of legitimacy vis-à-vis political liberalism, even when reasonable disagreement about justice is factored in. (shrink)