Problems Of International Justice

Steven Luper-foy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367284367
• eBook ISBN: 9781000308235
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

When the topic of international justice did arise, discussion rarely got beyond recommendations about how nations could avoid war, as well as suggestions about when a declaration of war was morally justifiable and what sorts of methods might be used in the course of a justifiable war the topics of so-called just-war theory. Such is no longer the case.To be sure, just-war theory is reaching greater states of sophistication, much of it focused around Michael Walzer's book Just and Unjust Wars.Excerpts from Walzer's book appear here, in Part Two, along with a set of newly written chapters that deal with issues arising from the use of violence among nations. The topics of these chapters are foreign interventionism and states' rights, deterrence and the threat of nuclear reprisal, and terrorism.But issues of international justice other than just-war theory have been discussed by an an ever-increasing group of twentieth-century scholars. These issues deal with what might be called (for lack of a better term) distributive justice, which concerns the distribution of the world's natural resources and the goods produced by laborers across the world, as well as the duties, rights, and liberties possessed by individuals. How such items ought to be distributed within nation-states has been discussed extensively by social and political philosophers. Only in recent years has any attention been paid to the proper distribution of goods internationally. The chapters in Part One all do so. With one exception, all of these chapters are written for this volume. The exception is an excerpt from Charles Beitz's book PoliticalTheory and International Relations, Part Three of which is reproduced here almost in its entirety. The other chapters in this part are devoted to the topics of justice and the distribution of the world's resources, the obligation to assist the needy, the responsibilities of international corporations, and justice and the global environment.

Part One
World Resources and Distributive Justice

A. Justice and Distribution of the World's Resources

1
International Distributive Justice

CHARLES R. BEITZ

In Part Three of his book Political Theory and International Relations, almost all of which is reproduced here, Charles Beitz argues that the duties of well-off nations are extensive. Although his argument relies heavily on work by John Rawls, Beitz rejects Rawls's conclusion that international justice does not demand substantial redistributions of goods from one nation to another. In doing so, Beitz joins several authors, including Brian Barry (in The Liberal Theory of Justice [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973]) and Thomas Scanlon (in "Rawls' Theory of Justice," University of Pennsylvania Law Review 121 [1973]).

Beitz's position is that if nations were more or less self-contained, then the requirements of justice on the international level would be relatively weak. Nonetheless, even then requirements would exist in addition to those discussed by Rawls. Most importantly, a redistribution of natural resources would be necessary. Even more substantial demands can be defended once we see that Rawls's self-containment thesis is false. In defending the resource redistribution principle, Beitz pretends that the self-containment thesis is correct, but in fact he thinks that nations are not nearly as disconnected as Rawls seems to suppose. Once we admit that international interaction is almost as complex as intranational interaction, Beitz claims, we will also have to admit that the difference principle should hold across the globe.

It is no part of the morality of states that residents of relatively affluent societies have obligations founded on justice to promote economic development elsewhere. Indeed, the tradition of international political theory is virtually silent on the matter of international distributive justice. The most that might be said, consistently with the morality of states, is that the citizens of relatively affluent societies have obligations based on the duty of mutual aid to help those who, without help, would surely perish. The obligation to contribute to the welfare of persons elsewhere, on such a view, is an obligation of charity.

Obligations or justice might be thought to be more demanding than this, to require greater sacrifices on the part of the relatively well-off, and perhaps sacrifices of a different kind as well. Obligations of justice, unlike those of mutual aid, might also require efforts at large-scale institutional reform. The rhetoric of the General Assembly's "Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order" suggests that it is this sort of obligation that requires wealthy countries to increase substantially their contributions to less-developed countries, and radically to restructure the world economic system. Do such obligations exist? . . .

I shall argue that a strong case can be made on contractarian grounds that persons of diverse citizenship have distributive obligations to one another analogous to those of citizens of the same state. International distributive obligations are founded on justice and not merely on mutual aid. As a critique and reinterpretation of Rawls's theory of justice,² the argument explores in more detail the observation . . . that international relations is coming more and more to resemble domestic society in several respects relevant to the justification of principles of (domestic) social justice. The intuitive idea is that it is wrong to limit the application of contractarian principles of social justice to the nation-state; instead, these principles ought to apply globally.³ The argument raises interesting problems for Rawls's theory, and, more important, it illuminates several central features of the question of global distributive justice. In view of increasingly visible global distributive inequalities, famine, and environmental deterioration, it can hardly be denied that this question poses one of the main political challenges of the foreseeable future. . . .

1. Social Cooperation, Boundaries, and the Basis of Justice

Justice, Rawls says, is the first virtue of social institutions. Its "primary subject" is "the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation."⁴

The central problem for a theory of justice is to identify principles by which the basic structure of society can be appraised. The two principles proposed as a solution to this problem are:

1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle [the "difference principle"], and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.⁵

These principles are Rawls's preferred interpretation of the "general conception" of justice, which applies ixi a wider range of circumstances than those in which the two principles are appropriate.⁶ . . .

Like Hume, Rawls regards society as a "cooperative venture for mutual advantage."⁸ Society is typically marked by both an identity and a conflict of interests. Everyone (or almost everyone) in society shares an interest in having access to the various goods that social activity can provide. At the same time, people's claims to these scarce goods may conflict. Principles are needed to identify institutions that will fairly distribute the benefits and burdens of social life.

The model of society as a cooperative scheme is very important for Rawls's theory, but it must not be taken too literally. It is important because it explains the social role of justice and specifies the characteristics of human activity by virtue of which the requirements of justice apply. Thus, principles of justice determine a fair distribution of the benefits and burdens produced by "social cooperation." If there were no such "cooperation," there would be no occasion for justice, since there would be no joint product with respect to which conflicting claims might be pressed, nor would there be any common institutions (e.g., enforceable property rights) to which principles could apply. But Rawls's model must not be taken too literally, since all of the parties to a particular social scheme may not actually cooperate in social activity, and each party may not actually be advantaged in comparison with what his or her position would be in the absence of that scheme. For example, there is no doubt that the polis of ancient Greece constituted a scheme of social cooperation to which the requirements of justice should apply, yet its slaves were neither willing cooperators in social life, nor were they necessarily advantaged in comparison with what their situations would have been outside of their society. (For that matter, none of the parties may be advantaged. Perhaps there are societies in which everyone's position is depressed. Such a society would be strange, but there is no obvious reason why judgments about its justice, or lack of it, would be inappropriate.) To say that society is a "cooperative venture for mutual advantage" is to add certain elements of a social ideal to a description of the circumstances to which justice applies. These additional elements unnecessarily narrow the description of these circumstances. It would be better to say that the requirements of justice apply to institutions and practices (whether or not they are genuinely cooperative) in which social activity produces relative or absolute benefits or burdens that would not exist if the social activity did not take place. Henceforth, I shall take Rawls's characterization of society as a cooperative scheme as an elliptical description of social schemes meeting this condition. . . .

Rawls assumes that "the boundaries" of the cooperative schemes to which the two principles apply "are given by the notion of a self-contained national community." This assumption "is not relaxed until the derivation of the principles of justice for the law of nations."¹¹ In other words, the assumption that national communities are self-contained is relaxed when international justice is considered. What does this mean? If the societies of the world are now to be conceived as open, fully interdependent systems, the world as a whole would fit the description of a scheme of social cooperation, and the arguments for the two principles would apply, a fortiori, at the global level. The principles of justice for international politics would be the two principles for domestic society writ large, and this would be a very radical result, given the tendency to equality of the difference principle. On the other hand, if societies are thought to be entirely self-contained—that is, if they are to have no relations of any kind with persons, groups, or societies beyond their borders—then why consider international justice at all? Principles of justice are supposed to regulate conduct, but if, ex hypothesi, there is no possibility of international conduct, it is difficult to see why principles of justice for the law of nations should be of any interest whatsoever. Rawls's discussion of justice among nations suggests that neither of these alternatives describes his intention in the passage quoted. Some intermediate assumption is required. Apparently, nation-states are now to be conceived as "more or less"¹² self-sufficient, but not entirely self-contained. Probably he imagines a world of nation-states which interact only in marginal ways; perhaps they maintain diplomatic relations, participate in a postal union, maintain limited cultural exchanges, and so on. Certainly the self-sufficiency assumption requires that societies have no significant trade or other economic relations. . . .

For the purpose of justifying principles for nations, Rawls reinterprets the original position as a sort of international conference:

One may extend the interpretation of the original position and think of the parties as representatives of different nations who must choose together the fundamental principles to adjudicate conflicting claims among states. Following out the conception of the initial situation, I assume that these representatives are deprived of various kinds of information. While they know that they represent different nations, each living under the normal circumstances of human life, they know nothing about the particular circumstances of their own society. . . . Once again the contracting parties, in this case representatives of states, are allowed only enough knowledge to make a rational choice to protect their interests but not so much that the more fortunate among them can take advantage of their special situation. This original position is fair between nations; it nullifies the contingencies and biases of historical fate.¹⁵

While he does not actually present arguments for any particular principles for nations, he claims that "there would be no surprises, since the principles chosen would, I think, be familiar ones."¹⁶ The examples given are indeed familiar; they include principles of self-determination, nonintervention, the pacta sunt servanda rule, a principle of justifiable self-defense, and principles defining jus in bello.¹⁷ These are supposed to be consequences of a basic principle of equality among nations, to which the parties in the reinterpreted original position would agree in order to protect and uphold their interests in successfully operating their respective societies and in securing compliance with the principles for individuals that protect human life.¹⁸ . . .

2. Entitlements to Natural Resources

Thus far, the ideal theory of international justice bears a striking resemblance to that proposed in the Definitive Articles of Kant's Perpetual Peace.²³ Accepting for the time being the assumption of national self-sufficiency, Rawls's choice of principles seems unexceptionable. But would this list of principles exhaust those to which the parties would agree? Probably not. At least one kind of consideration, involving natural resources, might give rise to moral conflict among states even in the absence of substantial social cooperation among them, and thus be a matter of concern in the international original position. The principles given so far do not take account of these considerations.

We can appreciate the moral importance of conflicting resource claims by distinguishing two elements that contribute to the material advancement of societies. One is human cooperative activity itself, which can be thought of as the human component of material advancement. The other is what Sidgwick called "the utilities derived from any portion of the earth's surface," the natural component.²⁴ While the first is the subject of the domestic principles of justice, the second is morally relevant even in the absence of a functioning scheme of international social cooperation. The parties to the international original position would know that natural resources are distributed unevenly over the earth's surface. Some areas are rich in resources, and societies established in such areas can be expected to exploit their natural riches and to prosper. Other societies do not fare so well, and despite the best efforts of their members, they may attain only a meager level of wellbeing because of resource scarcities.

The parties would view the distribution of resources much as Rawls says the parties to the domestic original-position deliberations view the distribution of natural talents. In that context, he says that natural endowments are "neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that men are born into society at any particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just or unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts."²⁵ A caste society, for example, is unjust because it distributes the benefits of social cooperation according to a rule that rests on morally arbitrary factors. Rawls's objection is that those who are less advantaged for reasons beyond their control cannot be asked to suffer the pains of inequality when their sacrifices cannot be shown to advance their position in comparison with an initial position of equality.

Reasoning analogously, the parties to the international original position would view the natural distribution of resou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Global Distributive Justice
• PART ONE WORLD RESOURCES AND DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
• Α. Justice and Distribution of the World's Resources
• Β. The Obligation to Assist the Needy
• C. The Responsibilities of International Corporations
• D. Justice and the Global Environment
• PART TWO THE LEGITIMATE USE OF VIOLENCE
• Α. Foreign Interventionism and States' Rights
• Β. Deterrence and the Threat of Nuclear Reprisal
• C. Terrorism
• PART THREE JUSTICE AND WORLD GOVERNMENT
• About the Editor and Contributors
• Index