5 - A reasonable law of peoples for a real world

Summary

The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally.

(Kant, Idea for an Universal History, 1784: 45)

Introduction

Could the main ideas of the theory of justice be adapted and extended to provide a theory of international justice? Can the conception of “justice as fairness” be unanimously adopted as a guideline for foreign policies, for international public law and for international redistributive justice? Could it help to establish the rule of law at the international level and, as a consequence, a lasting peace? These are the questions that Rawls will try to address in the later part of his work.

We need, to start with, a clear definition of the term “international justice”, which is very confusing and refers both to positive law and to normative rules or principles. As we have already seen, justice for Rawls does not mean institutional justice, or here, international law, but the normative guidelines that could regulate international relations at the legal, economic and political levels. It is important to make it clear that the “law of peoples” in Rawls' sense is not a reinterpretation of the classical jus gentium or law of nations, that is to say, of the existing body of international public law that applies to all nations. Again, Rawls' Society of Peoples is not another version of the United Nations, as it excludes two types of states: poor or “burdened societies” that do not have the means to cooperate; and “rogue” or “outlaw states” that do not want to cooperate and to abide by a common set of political and legal rules.