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John Rawls, “The Law of Peoples,” and International Political Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Chris Brown
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Extract

John Rawls is the most influential English-language political philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century – indeed, perhaps since John Stuart Mill. His influence rests partly on the very format of his masterwork, A Theory of Justice. But Theory is a flawed and incomplete masterpiece, and the “Rawls industry” that has developed around his work has been stimulated by these imperfections. Indeed, Rawls himself has corrected and elaborated upon his original formulations in a series of essays compiled in Political Liberalism and his recent Collected Papers. One of the most controversial features of Theory concerns its handling of international issues; Rawls turned to this question explicitly in an Amnesty International Lecture of 1993, “The Law of Peoples” (published in his Collected Papers), which he has now extended into a monograph with the same title. The latter is the main focus of this essay, which also includes a sketch of Rawls's project as a whole as a necessary preliminary.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 14 , March 2000 , pp. 125 - 132
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2000

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References

1 The revisions to A Theory of Justice were first made for the text's German translation in 1975, and change the argument at crucial points, making the earlier version obsolete (and undermining thirty years of scholarly commentary).

2 The paperback edition of Political Liberalism is crucial, containing a second introduction and a “Reply to Habermas,” which is irritating for those of us misguided enough to have bought the hardback; Collected Papers is hardback only.

3 This edition also contains the 1997 essay “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.”

4 What follows oversimplifies, and Rawls's technical apparatus employs terms that can only be identified, not defined, in an essay of this scope. For fuller accounts readers are directed to the original works themselves, and to commentaries such as Daniels, Norman, ed., Reading Rawls: Critical Studies of A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975Google Scholar).

5 Rawls, , Law, chap. 1Google Scholar.

6 While a just society as such is based on liberal principles, it is not necessary for its members themselves to be liberals; what is required of them is that when arguing for particular principles or policies they do not rely on comprehensive doctrines (including secular liberalism itself). Thus, for example, practicing Catholics may believe abortion to be contrary to God's law, but this is not an argument that they may employ in public debate, being required to defend their position via “public reason,” that is, by employing terms to which believers in other comprehensive doctrines can respondGoogle Scholar.

7 Rawls asserts that it is representatives of “societies,” not “states,” that meet in the second contract; likewise his later thoughts address the law of “peoples,” not international law as such. The reason for this seems to be that Rawls associates the idea that states are the relevant actors with realist thought in international relations (Law, chap. 2). However, it is difficult to see how, even in a realistic Utopia, the representatives of peoples could actually be different from the representatives of states.

8 Beitz, Charles, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979Google Scholar); Pogge, Thomas, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990Google Scholar); Barry, Brian, Theories of Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989Google Scholar). These criticisms are discussed in Brown, Chris, “Review Essay: Theories of International Justice,” British Journal of Political Science 27 (1997), pp. 273–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Importantly, Rawls holds open the possibility that there might be other decent societies, on which see the final section of this essayGoogle Scholar.

10 In this respect Kazanistan is very unlike Saudi Arabia, which some believed (or feared) was the model for his original conception of a well-ordered hierarchyGoogle Scholar.

11 A benevolent absolutism is peaceful and fully respects human rights but has no consultation mechanism; Rawls has little to say about such societies, save that as peaceful states they are entitled to the protection of the principle of nonaggressionGoogle Scholar.

12 Rawls, , Law, p. 28Google Scholar. It is because states are so often “rational” in this sense that Rawls prefers to think in terms of a “law of peoples” rather than international law.

13 Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars, 2d ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1992Google Scholar).

14 Rawls, , Law, p. 105Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., p. 106Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 115Google Scholar.

17 See, e.g., Barry, Brian, “Review Essay: John Rawls and the Search for Stability,” Ethics 105 (1995), pp. 874–915CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 For the former, see Ruggie, John Gerard, Constructing the World Polity (New York: Routledge, 1998CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Wendt, Alexander, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999CrossRefGoogle Scholar); for the latter, Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (London: 1977/1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Dunne, Tim, Inventing International Society (London: Macmillan, 1998CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

19 Nagel, Thomas, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991Google Scholar).