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The Boundary of Justice and the Justice of Boundaries: Defending Global Egalitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Kok-Chor Tan
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Extract

Two classes of arguments are often deployed by the anti-global egalitarians against attempts to universalize the demands of distributive equality. One are arguments attempting to show that global egalitarians have misconstrued the reasons for why equality matters domestically, and hence have wrongly extended these reasons to the global arena. These arguments hold that the boundary of distributive justice is effectively coextensive with the boundaries of state. The other are arguments that attempt to show that membership in political societies generates special duties among members that may outweigh the demands of global egalitarianism. These arguments appeal to the ethical significance of state boundaries and membership. In my defense of global egalitarianism, I reject both the attempts to limit the boundary of justice and the attempts to give state boundaries special moral significance and priority. In particular, I will argue that the boundary of justice cannot coincide with the boundaries of states when the justice of the boundaries is at issue.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , July 2006 , pp. 319 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2006

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References

An earlier version of this paper was presented at The Department of Philosophy, The University of Pennsylvania and I am grateful to members of the audience for their good questions and criticisms. Thanks particularly to Karen Detlefsen and Susan Meyer for their helpful questions, and to Greg Hall, Matt Lister and David Reidy for their written critical comments. Most of all, thanks to Samuel Freeman for the numerous insightful and critical discussions on the subject, and for sharing his own forthcoming papers on this topic with me.

1. Beitz, Charles R., Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979) at Part IIIGoogle Scholar; Pogge, Thomas W., Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989) at Part IIIGoogle Scholar. See also Buchanan, Allen, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self Determination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) at ch. 4Google Scholar; Caney, Simon, Justice Beyond Borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Moellendorf, Darrel Cosmopolitan Justice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002)Google Scholar. In contrast, in his Global Justice: defending cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), Jones, Charles Google Scholar is concerned not so much with global egalitarianism as with “the specific problem of poverty” (5). Similarly Pogge’s, Thomas W. more recent World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity, 2002)Google Scholar is primarily concerned with the problem of global poverty.

2. Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971) at 15.Google Scholar

3. Miller, Richard W., “Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern,” (1998) 27/3 Phil. & Pub. Affairs 202 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, David, “Against Global Egalitarianism” (2005) 9/1-2 J. Ethics 55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walzer, Michael, “Response” in Miller, David & Walzer, Michael, eds., Pluralism, Justice, and Equality (Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Nagel, Thomas, “The Problem of Global Justice” (2005) 33/2 Phil. & Pub. Affairs 113 Google Scholar; Rawls, John, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), esp. Part IIIGoogle Scholar; and Freeman, Samuel, Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawls (New York: Oxford University Press) [forthcoming] at chs. 8 and 9 Google Scholar, and “The Law of Peoples, Social Cooperation, Human Rights, and Distributive Justice” (2006) 23/1 Soc. Phil. & Policy 29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Blake, Michael, “Distributive Justice, State Coercion and Autonomy” (2001) 30/3 Phil. & Pub. Affairs 257 Google Scholar; Reidy, David, “A Just Global Economy: In Defense of Rawls” J. Ethics [forthcoming]Google Scholar, and Heath, Joseph, “Rawls on Global Distributive Justice: A Defense” Can. J. Phil. [forthcoming]. 4.Google Scholar See, e.g., David Miller, “Against Global Egalitarianism”, supra note 3.

5. As Dworkin notes, one need not deny the validity of a principle when one takes it to be outweighed by other considerations or principles in particular instances. Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977)Google ScholarPubMed at ch. 2. So an anti-global egalitarian may oppose the universal application of egalitarian justice without denying the universal scope of a distributive principle, but (more modestly) by showing how other principled considerations can outweigh the principle of global equality and hence limit its application.

6. Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice,” supra note 3 at 128.

7. Hobbes’s own views on international justice are arguably more complex and so I intend this literally as a Hobbesian view rather than Hobbes’s own view on the matter. For one discussion on Hobbes and international law and justice that runs against the traditional view of Hobbes as an international amoralist, see May, Larry, “Jus Cogens Norms” in his Crimes Against Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

8. Indeed, anti-global egalitarians will lament this actual failing on the part of rich countries, given that the goal here is that of poverty reduction. But they can do this only if they accept the distinction between what justice demands and how justice can be affected.

9. For some discussion on international law as “public”, and hence not entirely subject to the political interests of state agents, see Kingsbury, Benedict, “The Problem of the Public in Public International Law” in NOMOS: XLIX. Moral Universalism and Pluralism (New York: New York University Press) [forthcoming]Google Scholar; and Slaughter, Anne Marie, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. For criticism of the Hobbesian world view, see Beitz’s classic treatment in Part I, supra note 1.

10. The Law of People, supra note 3 at 36; also at 70.

11. See Rawls’s rejection of political realism in Part I of The Law of Peoples, supra note 3.

12. Ibid. at 14.

13. Rawls, John, Justice as Fairness: a Restatement, ed. by Kelly, Erin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) at 123.Google Scholar

14. Ibid. Also at 49, 76-77.

15. Ibid. at 126-30.

16. Rawls is explicit that reciprocity is a relevant criterion not only among democratic citizens but also among peoples. See The Law of Peoples, supra note 3 at 35, 57.

17. Ibid. at 114.

18. See also Rawls, Justice as Fairness, supra note 13 at 93-94, 40.

19. Ibid. at 40-41.

20. As Paul Guyer lucidly reveals, this relationship between coercion, reciprocity and distributive justice can be found in Kant’s political philosophy. See Guyer, , “Life, Liberty and Property: Rawls and Kant” in his Kant on Freedom, Law and Happiness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2000) at 274ff 285ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whether this Kantian account of distributive justice supports the limited thesis, I leave to one side for now. I suspect though, that if, as Guyer argues, the commitment to distributive justice is required if property rights enforcement (necessary for turning the right to property from a mere “provisional right” to a “conclusive” right) is to be reciprocally justifiable to all involved one can argue that in as far as there are international norms and laws defining and protecting international property rights, then the Kantian account would deny the limited thesis and instead support some global distributive commitment. For Guyer’s arguments in this direction, see his “The Possibility of Perpetual Peace” in Ciprut, J.C., ed., Ethics, Politics, and Democracy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press) [forthcoming]Google Scholar.

21. R. Miller, “Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern”, supra note 3 at 203-04.

22. Blake, “Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy”, supra note 3 at 283.

23. As a point of textual analysis, it is worth noting that R. Miller’s reciprocity argument for distributive justice emphasizes the need to give democratic citizens incentives to accept and comply with the coercive institutions of their society. Blake’s argument focuses on personal autonomy, claiming that coercive arrangements can be justified to fellow autonomous agents only if these arrangements do not permit excessive inequalities between them. But in either case, it is the idea of reciprocity that is fundamental—both are concerned with providing individuals with reasons to accept coercive institutions. Nagel’s argument, as we will see in a moment, has again a different focus. Nagel stresses not the fact that citizens are subjects of coercive arrangements but that they are responsible authors of these arrangements and hence have a rightful say in how these arrangements ought to be.

24. The argument from coercion is unlike the Hobbesian argument contemplated above. That argument was an argument about the concept of justice. The present argument has to do more with the idea of legitimacy. It is not that without enforcement there can be no justice; it is that to justify and legitimize the coercive enforcement authority of the state, the state (which is collectively supported by every citizen) owes each of its citizens a distributive egalitarian commitment (among other things).

25. Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, supra note 3 at 121.

26. Some might say that distributive duties are positive duties and positive duties can only be associative. But this (controversial) libertarian move is not one that the anti-global egalitarians I am discussing would themselves accept.

27. The next three paragraphs draw on my Justice Without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Patriotism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) at 172–77.Google Scholar

28. See Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, supra note 1; also s O’Neill, Onora, Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Blake, supra note 3 at 280.

30. It is of course true that one’s place of birth is a natural fact and not itself a matter of justice. As Rawls has noted, natural facts in themselves that are neither just nor unjust; what is just or unjust is “the way the basic structure of society makes use of these natural differences and permits them to affect the social fortune of citizens, their opportunities in life, and the actual terms of cooperation between them” ( Rawls, , “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory” in Freeman, Samuel, ed., John Rawls: Collected Papers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999) at 337.Google Scholar The natural fact of a person’s geographical place of birth becomes an issue of justice because global institutions turn that fact into an actual social disadvantage for the person.

31. Freeman, Justice and the Social Contract, supra note 3.

32. Ibid., emphasis mine.

33. Ibid.

34. Kant, Immanuel, “Idea For a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” in Reiss, H.S., trans. by and ed., Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) at 48 Google Scholar, stress in original.

35. I am grateful for David Reidy’s critical and helpful comments on the following paragraphs.

36. Nagel, supra note 3 at 129, emphasis mine.

37. The reference to “law-maker” suggests that, for Nagel, a just society has to be a democratic society in which citizens are not merely participants of a system of social cooperation but that they have some say in the terms of cooperation. This contactarian reading of justice in Nagel, namely that a just society has to be democratic in some form, that is, a society whose members are in some sense authors of their own laws and not simply subject to them, is consistent with Nagel’s overall position. Consider his opposition to Rawls’s account of international toleration. Nagel writes that “there seems nothing wrong with being particularly supportive of transformation in a liberal direction” (ibid. at 135) even when we concede that there are “obvious practical reasons” for not imposing liberal democratic ideals on nonliberal societies. “We owe it to other people—considered as individuals—to allow them, and to some degree enable them, to collectively govern themselves” (ibid., my stress). That is, we owe it to others, morally speaking, to allow them, if not even help them, establish domestic democratic institutions.

38. Ibid. at 130.

39. Ibid. at 139.

40. Ibid. at 129-30, emphasis mine.

41. Dworkin writes, “A political community that exercises dominion over its own citizens, and demands from them allegiance and obedience to its laws, must take up an impartial, objective attitude toward them all …. Equal concern … is the special and indispensable virtue of sovereigns.” Dworkin, Ronald, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000) at 6.Google Scholar

42. This point is suggested in Kant: “The concept of Right, insofar as it is related to an obligation corresponding to it (i.e., the moral concept of Right), has to do first only with the external and indeed practical relation of one person to another, insofar as their actions, as facts, can have (direct or indirect) influence on each other.” Kant, , The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. by Gregor, Mary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) at 56.Google Scholar See also sections 43-45 in “The Doctrine of Right”.

43. Hardimon, Michael, “Role Obligation” (1994) XCI/7 J. Phil. 333 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scheffler, Samuel, Boundaries and Allegiances (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

44. See Hardimon, supra note 43.

45. Scheffler, supra note 43 at 121.

46. Thus I don’t attempt to argue that patriotic favoritism is indefensible per se or without any rational basis. For carefully laid out arguments in this direction, see Jones, Charles, Global Justice at ch. 7.Google Scholar

47. See Amy Gutmann, “Justice Across the Spheres” in Miller & Walzer, supra note 3.

48. Saying that duties of friendship are limited by considerations of justice does not mean that these duties are derivable from justice; rather it means only that the scope and content of these duties are constrained by the requirements of justice.

49. Carens, Joseph, “Aliens and Citizens: the case for open borders” (1987) 49/3 Rev. Politics 251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar