Defending a Law of Peoples: Political Liberalism and Decent Peoples

In this paper I reconstruct and defend John Rawls' The Law of Peoples, including the distinction between liberal and decent peoples. A “decent people” is defined as a people who possesses a comprehensive doctrine and uses that doctrine as the ground of political legitimacy, while liberal peoples do not possess a comprehensive doctrine. I argue that liberal and decent peoples are bound by the same normative requirements with the qualification that decent peoples accept the same normative demands when they are reasonably interpreted and from their comprehensive doctrine, not from political liberalism. Normative standards for peoples appear in a law of peoples in two places: as internal constraints carried forward from political liberalism which regulate domestic affairs and as principles derived from a second original position that provide the normative ground for a society of peoples. This first source of normative standards was unfortunately obscured in Rawls' account. I use this model to defeat the claim that Rawls has accommodated decent peoples without sufficient warrant and to argue that all reasonable citizens of both liberal and decent peoples would accept the political authority of the state as legitimate. Although my reconstruction differs from Rawls on key points, such as modifying the idea of decency and rejecting a place for decent peoples within a second original position, overall I defend the theoretical completeness of political liberalism and show how a law of peoples provides reasonable principles of international justice. This paper explores theoretical ideas I introduced in embryonic form in a paper presented at the International Conference on Human Rights: Theoretical Foundations of Human Rights, 17–18 May, 2003, Mofid University (Qom, Iran). That paper, “Political Liberalism and Religious Freedom: Asymmetrical Tolerance for Minority Comprehensive Doctrines” (forthcoming in the Proceedings of the conference), addressed specific issues related to religious toleration, but left unexplored theoretical questions regarding the status of decent peoples. I wish to thank participants in the conference for their helpful feedback on my interpretation of Rawls' international political theory, especially Jack Donnelly, Michael Freeman, Stephen Macedo, Samuel Fleishacker, Omar Dahbour, Yasien Ali Mohamed, and Saladin Meckled-Garcia. In addition, I wish to offer my sincere appreciation to the Executive Committee of the Conference and especially to Sayyed Masoud Moosavi Karimi, Nasser Elahi, and Mohammad Habibi Modjandeh.     

Principles for The Law of Peoples

In The Law of Peoples John Rawls gives a list of eight principles for the law of peoples. I argue that the force of the principles depends in large part upon their being lexically ordered, and I attempt such an ordering. However, the lexically ordered list makes it clear that the duty of non-intervention obtains only after the duty to honor human rights is satisfied. Also, I point to certain “practical” difficulties with intervention on behalf of human rights. Rawls writes that additional principles are needed, and I make two suggestions. I conclude that the problems arising from intervention and the need for additional principles show that the “second Original Position” is like the first Original Position: both involve, Rawls notwithstanding, the selection and ordering of principles of justice.     

An Egalitarian Argument against Reducing Deprivation

Deprivations normally give rise to undeserved inequality. It is commonly thought that one way of improving a situation with respect to equality is by reducing the incidence of deprivations. In this paper I argue that there is at least one respect in which reducing the incidence of deprivations can make things worse from the point of view of equality. While eliminating deprivations leads to the elimination of inequalities, reducing the incidence of deprivations leads to an uneven distribution of the pairwise relations of inequality of a population, which leads to the concentration of pairwise relations of inequality in the worse off. If my argument is correct, egalitarians have reasons to broaden their dimensions of concern: egalitarians should not only be concerned about the unequal distribution of goods, but also about the unequal distribution of pairwise relations of inequality of a population.     

Chekov and the Egalitarian

What is it for a situation to be worse or better for someone? This paper considers an answer to that question which draws on a distinction implicit in a work of Chekhov between a happy and a worthwhile life. It examines the implications of that answer for recent debates about equality, outlining the virtues of a virtues‐based egalitarianism.     

Distributive Justice in the State of Nature: An Egalitarian View

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel egalitarian answer to the question: what initial distribution of the world’s resources could possibly count as just? Like many writers in the natural rights tradition, I take for granted that distributive justice consists in conformity to pre-political principles that apply to property regimes. Against the background of that assumption, the paper distinguishes between broadly Lockean and broadly Grotian conceptions of distributive justice in the state of nature. After an extended critique of various versions of the Lockean approach, it argues for a particular, egalitarian version of the Grotian view. My position is based on what I call the common ownership formula, which says: each human being, as an equal co-owner of the world’s resources, may use those resources provided that the terms of their use are in conformity with principles that no co-owner could reasonably reject as the basis of an informed, unforced general agreement between all of the world’s co-owners who sought to find equitable principles of resource division. Using this principle, I suggest how an unequivocally egalitarian view of pre-political entitlement can be justified without recourse to any alleged duty to ameliorate the effects of brute bad luck on people’s lives.     

Egalitarian Justice and Expected Value

According to all-luck egalitarianism, the differential distributive effects of both brute luck, which defines the outcome of risks which are not deliberately taken, and option luck, which defines the outcome of deliberate gambles, are unjust. Exactly how to correct the effects of option luck is, however, a complex issue. This article argues that (a) option luck should be neutralized not just by correcting luck among gamblers, but among the community as a whole, because it would be unfair for gamblers as a group to be disadvantaged relative to non-gamblers by bad option luck; (b) individuals should receive the warranted expected results of their gambles, except insofar as individuals blamelessly lacked the ability to ascertain which expectations were warranted; and (c) where societal resources are insufficient to deliver expected results to gamblers, gamblers should receive a lesser distributive share which is in proportion to the expected results. Where all-luck egalitarianism is understood in this way, it allows risk-takers to impose externalities on non-risk-takers, which seems counterintuitive. This may, however, be an advantage as it provides a luck egalitarian rationale for assisting ‘negligent victims’.     

GLOBAL JUSTICE AFTER THE FALL Christian Realism and the "Law of Peoples"

In The Law of Peoples John Rawls casts his proposals as an argument against what he calls “political realism.” Here, I contend that a certain version of “Christian political realism” survives Rawls's polemic against political realism sans phrase and that Rawls overstates his case against political realism writ large. Specifically, I argue that Rawls's dismissal of “empirical political realism” is underdetermined by the evidence he marshals in support of the dismissal and that his rejection of “normative political realism” is in tension with his own normative concessions to political reality as expressed in The Law of Peoples. That is, I contend that Rawls, himself, needs some form of political realism to render persuasive the full range of normative claims constituting the argument of that work.     

Non-domination and Egalitarian Welfare Politics

In this article I will do three things: I will argue that solidarity is not necessary for political legitimacy, that non-domination is a strong candidate for legitimacy criterion, and, finally, that non-domination can legitimate the egalitarian welfare state.     

罗尔斯万民法理论之现实乌托邦的内涵和特征

约翰·罗尔斯认为,万民法是一种关于权利和正义的原则和准则,是用于国际法和国际实践中的世界正义,现实乌托邦学说则是一种走向世界正义的合理的政治总念。罗尔斯的现实乌托邦学说兼有普世主义和特殊主义的双重特征,始终飘摇于理想主义与现实主义之间,表现为一种新自由主义式的带有现实关怀的国际道义主义。     

A Rawlsian Case for Economic Nationalism: Globalisation and Distributional Autonomy in the Law of Peoples

John Rawls’ resistance to any kind of global egalitarian principle has seemed strange and unconvincing to many commentators, including those generally supportive of Rawls’ project. His rejection of a global egalitarian principle seems to rely on an assumption that states are economically bounded and separate from one another, which is not an accurate portrayal of economic relations among states in our globalised world. In this article, I examine the implications of the domestic theory of justice as fairness to argue that Rawls has good reason to insist on economically bounded states. I argue that certain central features of the contemporary global economy, particularly the free movement of capital across borders, undermine the distributional autonomy required for states to realise Rawls’ principles of justice, and the domestic theory thus requires a certain degree of economic separation among states prior to the convening of the international original position. Given this, I defend Rawls’ reluctance to endorse a global egalitarian principle and defend a policy regime of international capital controls, to restore distributional autonomy and make the realisation of the principles of justice as fairness possible.     

Indigenous Peoples of Indo-Myanmar

Drawing from the Indigenous Christian communities of the Indo-Myanmar region of India, this article discusses the theme of reconciliation as a mission paradigm. Sketching some cultural contours of communities to illustrate the role of the historical encounter and experience of Christian mission in consolidating modern ethnic identity, the paper points out some vestiges of the culture. Despite the embrace of Christianity and the immense changes to the communities initiated, observation reveals practices of contradictions, latent tensions, resistance to the “other,” and sporadic conflicts. The paper therefore argues that the historical experience of reconciliation among the different Indigenous groups needs to continue in constructing an inclusive society of Indigenous Christians. The article discusses including women and other excluded members, overcoming cultural practices, and transforming resistance to the “other” as markers of inclusive community. In developing the argument from a local context, it reiterates the centrality of reconciliation and inclusive community in the experience of Christian mission. To be disciples of Christ is to belong together, and belonging together requires “mutual enfolding” to a new social kinship – the kingdom of God. In conclusion, some recommendations for a mission of reconciliation from Indigenous Christian communities are listed in the hope that reconciliation as mission is sustained by a vision of a healed and just world.     

Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos Revisited

This paper reconsiders some themes and arguments from my earlier paper “Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos.” That work is often considered to be part of a cluster of papers attacking “luck egalitarianism” on the grounds that insisting on luck egalitarianism’s standards of fairness undermines relations of mutual respect among citizens. While this is an accurate reading, the earlier paper did not make its motivations clear, and the current paper attempts to explain the reasons that led me to write the earlier paper, assesses the force of its arguments, and locates it in respect to work of Richard Arneson and Elizabeth Anderson. The paper concludes by bringing out what now appears to be the main message of the earlier paper: that the attempt to implement an “ideal” theory of equality can harm the very people that the theory is designed to help.     

Peoples and Secession

ABSTRACT Kai Nielson (Secession: The Case of Quebec, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Volume 10, No. 1), as did Allen Buchanan in Secession (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), discusses secession on an analogy with no-fault divorce. Both these writers fail to distinguish between what it is to be a person and what it is to be a people, where peoples are the items that secede. The issue of what constitutes a people is thus crucial to the theory of secession (for similar reasons to those that made it crucial to seventeenth century debate about the right of resistance to the monarch). It is also the of persons a people is often the fact that they are a particular racial group that has suffered unfair discrimination from the prevailing government or that they came to live where they do live by virtue of incidents that affect the justice of their relations with that government. Issues of justice thus enter the matter of the people's identity in a way that rules out the justifiability of unilateral no-fault secession.     

为柯亨的平等主义风尚辩护

柯亨认为,罗尔斯差别原则的真正实现,不仅需要公正的强制性规则,而且还需要一种贯穿个人选择之中的平等主义风尚。对于这种平等主义风尚,有妨碍职业自由、伤害到最不利者的尊严以及这种风尚无法实现三种反对意见,但这些反对并不成功。同时,也存在从保护职业自由的角度、从用好"才能"的角度、从运用辩护性共同体的角度三种修正平等主义风尚的方法,其中前两种修正存在一定问题,第三种则更为成功。     

Egalitarian nonconsequentialism and the levelling down objection

Telic egalitarianism is famously threatened by the levelling down objection. In its canonical form, the objection purports to show that it is not, in itself, an improvement if inequality is reduced. In a variant that is less often discussed, the objection is that telic egalitarians are committed to believing that sometimes one ought to reduce inequality, even when doing so makes no one better off. The standard egalitarian response to this ‘all things considered’ variant of the levelling down objection is to embed egalitarianism in a pluralist consequentialist moral theory. In section 1, I briefly recapitulate this familiar strategy. In section 2, I argue that this standard pluralist consequentialist response is inadequate. The inadequacy of the standard response, I argue, stems from the fact that the following are jointly inconsistent: (1) a commitment to levelling down's impermissibility; (2) standard pluralist egalitarian consequentialism; (3) inequality being of non‐trivial importance; and (4) the most plausible measures of inequality's badness. In section 3, I show that egalitarians can better respond to the all‐things‐considered levelling down objection by embedding egalitarianism in a nonconsequentialist moral theory.