Should Germany be prosecuting crimes committed in Syria pursuant to universal jurisdiction (UJ)? This article revisits the normative questions raised by UJ—the principle that a state can prosecute serious international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed by foreigners outside of its territories—against the backdrop of increasing European UJ proceedings regarding Syrian conflict–related crimes, focusing on Germany as an illustrative example. While existing literature justifies UJ on the basis of universal prohibition of certain atrocities, this creates residual normative issues. Alternatively, this article applies the “two-tiered test” derived from the “dual foundation” thesis of the Eichmann judgment, in which the normative appropriateness of UJ is evaluated against both accounts of universal prohibition and the specific politics surrounding the prosecution. It contends that the large number of Syrian refugees in Germany means that Germany, in particular, should initiate Syrian conflict–related UJ proceedings to prevent continued harm and recognize the political agency of refugees. Ultimately, the article suggests UJ should normatively be thought of as a domestic, rather than international, political event.

Abstract: What would constitute just representation for the climate vulnerable? My purpose in this essay is to provide a critique of the default frame for approaching this question, as well as to offer a suggestion for expanding our conception of what an adequate answer should include. The standard frame conceives of representing vulnerable climate interests largely in terms of formal mechanisms of representation in technocratic and bureaucratic institutions. I show the limits of that standard approach and caution against the discussion of climate representation being overly confined to the level of “formal” representation. I go on to detail the importance of thinking about more “informal” modes of representing vulnerable climate interests. In order to pursue both of these aims, I draw on lessons in meaningful representation and inclusion during postconflict peacebuilding.

Extensive urbanization is one of the most significant demographic and geopolitical phenomena of our time. Yet, with few exceptions, constitutional theory has failed to turn its attention to this crucial trend. In particular, the burgeoning constitutional literature aimed at addressing phenomena such as democratic backsliding, constitutional retrogression, and populist threats to judicial independence and the rule of law has failed to respond to the significance of place as an emerging cleavage in contemporary politics. An alarming disconnect has emerged between constitutionalism's overwhelmingly statist (or Westphalian) outlook and the reality of geographically localized concentration of worldviews, policy preferences, and political identities. In this essay, I identify urban agglomeration and the accompanying resurgence of the urban-rural divide as posing a critical challenge to liberal constitutional democracy, and argue that the time is ripe to pay closer attention to the spatial dimension of constitutional governance and its impact on the rise of anti-establishment political resentment. To that end, in the essay's final part I identify several areas of constitutional law and theory that appear to hold some intellectual promise in thinking creatively about mitigating the urban-rural divide, and about the mounting urban challenge more generally.

What does vaccine justice require at the domestic and global levels? In this essay, using the COVID-19 pandemic as a backdrop, we argue that deliberative-democratic participation is needed to answer this question. To be effective on the ground, abstract principles of vaccine justice need to be further specified through policy. Any vaccination strategy needs to find ways to prioritize conflicting moral claims to vaccine allocation, clarify the grounds on which low-risk people are being asked to vaccinate, and reach a balance between special duties toward countrymen and universal duties toward foreigners. Reasonable moral disagreement on these questions is bound to exist in any community. But such disagreement threatens to undermine vaccine justice insofar as the chosen vaccination strategy (and its proposed specification of vaccine justice) lacks public justification. Inclusive democratic deliberation about vaccine justice is a good mechanism for tackling such moral disagreement. By allowing residents and citizens to participate in the specification of abstract principles of vaccine justice, and their translation into policy, democratic deliberation can enhance the legitimacy of any vaccination strategy and boost compliance with it.

During the final months of Sri Lanka's 2006–2009 civil war, Sri Lankan armed forces engaged in a disproportionate and indiscriminate shelling campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which culminated in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. Conventional wisdom suggests that Sri Lanka undermined international humanitarian law (IHL). Significantly, however, the Sri Lankan government did not directly challenge such law or attempt to justify its departure from it. Rather, it invented a new set of facts about its conduct to sidestep its legal obligations. Though indirect, this challenge was no less significant than had Sri Lanka explicitly rejected those obligations. Drawing on Clark et al.'s concept of denialism, this article details the nature of Sri Lanka's challenge to the standing of IHL. At the core of its denialist move, Sri Lanka maintained that while the LTTE was using civilians as human shields, government forces were adhering to a zero civilian casualty approach. With this claim, Sri Lanka absolved itself of any responsibility for the toll inflicted on civilians and sealed its conduct off from the ambit of IHL. This case illustrates how actors can considerably undermine the law using strategies of contestation far more subtle than direct confrontation.

This essay weaves together the history of political and legal thought, contemporary democratic theory, and recent debates in legal scholarship to examine the ambivalent relationship between political parties and democracy. Celebrated as a structural necessity for the mechanics of democratic government, political parties are also handled with suspicion for their hybrid nature—neither entirely public nor completely private—and for their always-possible regression into factions. Anti-factionalism, I show, has been a powerful ideal driving constitutional imagination and practice over the centuries, from antiquity (with its emphasis on parts and its horror over factions), to the age of democratic revolutions (with its signature anxieties about divisions), up through the present. However, this long historical process has not extinguished the long-lived concern with the nature and implications of party spirit, nor has it made party democracy completely safe from revamped forms of factionalism. Two manifestations of factional politics stand out in the contemporary political landscape: authoritarian regime changes and populist constitutionalism. While the former is easy to diagnose but hard to prevent, the latter exemplifies a torsion of the constitutional and democratic imagination from within. Despite their differences, both scenarios remind us that constitutions need to envision mechanisms to prevent parties from undermining the liberal democratic order they have been designed to serve. At the same time, they call for renewed attention to the study of parties in the domains of democratic theory and constitutional scholarship.

Extreme impacts from climate change are already being felt around the world. The policy choices that we make now will affect not only how high global temperatures rise but also how well-equipped future economies and infrastructures are to cope with these changes. The interests of future generations must therefore be central to climate policy and practice. This raises the questions: Who should represent the interests of future generations with respect to climate change? And according to which criteria should we judge whether a particular candidate would make an appropriate representative for future generations? In this essay, we argue that potential representatives of future generations should satisfy what we call a “hypothetical acceptance criterion,” which requires that the representative could reasonably be expected to be accepted by future generations. This overarching criterion in turn gives rise to two derivative criteria. These are, first, the representative's epistemic and experiential similarity to future generations, and second, his or her motivation to act on behalf of future generations. We conclude that communities already adversely affected by climate change best satisfy these criteria and are therefore able to command the hypothetical acceptance of future generations.

What is political about political refugeehood? Theorists have assumed that refugees are special because their specific predicament as those who are persecuted sets them aside from other “necessitous strangers.” Persecution is a special form of wrongful harm that marks the repudiation of a person's political membership and that cannot—contrary to certain other harms—be remedied where they are. It makes asylum necessary as a specific remedial institution. In this article, I argue that this is correct. Yet, the connection between political membership, its repudiation, and persecution is far from clear. Drawing on normative political thought and research on autocracies, repression, and migration studies, I show that it is political oppression that marks the repudiation of political membership and leads to various forms of repression that can equally not be remedied at home. A truly political account moves away from persecution and endorses political oppression as the normative pillar of refugeehood and asylum.

The conflict in Ukraine indicates some of the features of a potential post-liberal order and raises several potential ethical issues that may arise for international interventions as the world changes. What types of interventions, if any, are justifiable in response to situations such as the one in Ukraine? Can interventions be permissible given the potential undermining of universalist claims that are often used to support them? How should states prioritize between situations if there is an even greater number of global challenges in a post-liberal order? Three new books—Solferino 21 by Hugo Slim, Decolonizing Human Rights by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, and Promoting Justice across Borders by Lucia Rafanelli—can help to navigate these questions. Drawing on their insights, this essay argues that reform interventions can be justified to defend the liberal international order, that intervention can be defended from a relativist basis, and that socioeconomic rights should be given greater priority.

Amartya Sen's memoir, Home in the World, is a compelling read, giving a fascinating view of the making of the mind of one of the foremost public intellectuals of our time. In reflections on the first three decades of his life—all filled with an amazing range of experiences, encounters, and intellectual explorations that span Asia, Europe, and North America—Sen weaves a comprehensive and interlocking narrative that brings together a unitary worldview where two multi-dimensional themes are juxtaposed throughout the book: the presence of the past and the convergence of the near and the far. In this essay, I highlight some of the life experiences and lessons shared in Sen's memoir grounded in his ideas of identity and shared humanity. These ideas took on a prominent place in Sen's life, in part, through his educational experience at the innovative school founded by the visionary poet Rabindranath Tagore. I draw on the views of both Sen and Tagore, as discussed in Sen's memoir. These lessons and ideas can help us in appreciating the power of knowledge, the value of education, and the allure of diversity. They can also guide us in our search for a more just world.

Communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as reduced access to material resources and increased exposure to adverse weather conditions, are intimately tied to a considerable amount of cultural and biological diversity on our planet. Much of that diversity is bound up in the social practices of Indigenous groups, which is why these practices have great long-term value. Yet, little attention has been given to them by philosophers. Also neglected have been the historical conditions and contemporary realities that constrain these practices and devalue the knowledge of their practitioners. In this essay, we make the case for preserving a diverse range of social practices worldwide, and we argue that this is possible only by strengthening the communities of practitioners who enact them in the contexts in which they are adaptive. By concentrating on Indigenous communities, we show how focusing on practices can transform how Indigenous and other local communities are represented in global climate-change conversations and policy as a matter of justice. More specifically, we argue that practice-centered thinking and local practices provide critical insights for determining the extent to which climate policies protect and enable transformative change.

Initially portrayed as the “great equalizer,” the COVID-19 pandemic has proved anything but. This essay recounts the sobering social disparities and vulnerabilities that the pandemic has exposed, especially when it comes to the inequalities that are baked into existing membership regimes, before turning to narratives of hope and democratic renewal. My discussion shines a spotlight on the relationship between borders, (im)mobility, and struggles for recognition and inclusion that have long been central to the practice of citizenship. Focusing on pathways to the acquisition of full membership status for those who are currently denied it, I will deploy logics and policies that have already begun to take shape in different parts of the world, with the goal of amplifying their effects and multiplying their scale. I identify three possible trajectories for postpandemic recovery, two of which offer ways to enhance equality of status and public standing by enlarging the circle of membership: first, through contribution (or what I will term “jus contribuere”), and second, by highlighting what we might call “solidarity in place.” The third reaction, which we might call the “stratification of membership,” pulls in the opposite direction by sharply redrawing the lines—legal, economic, social—that have distinguished insiders from outsiders, and exacerbated patterns of stratification and inequality of status and opportunity that predate the pandemic.

In recent years, the target of reaching “net zero” emissions by 2050 has come to the forefront of global climate politics. Net zero would see carbon emissions matched by carbon removals and should allow the planet to avoid dangerous climate change. But the recent prominence of this goal should not distract from the fact that there are many possible versions of net zero. Each of them will have different climate justice implications, and some of them could have very negative consequences for the world's poor. This article demonstrates the many ambiguities of net zero, and argues in favor of a net zero strategy in which those who can reasonably bear the burden adopt early and aggressive mitigation policies. We also argue for a net zero strategy in which countries place the lion's share of their faith in known emissions reduction approaches, rather than being heavily reliant on as-yet-unproven “negative emissions techniques.” Our overarching goal is to put net zero in its place, by providing a clear-sighted view of what net zero will achieve, and where the “net” in net zero needs to be tightened further if the world is to achieve climate justice.

This article tackles the issue of offshore tax sheltering from the perspective of normative political realism. Tax sheltering is a pressing contemporary policy challenge, with hundreds of billions in private assets protected in offshore trusts and shell companies. Indeed, tax sheltering produces a variety of empirical dilemmas that render it a distinctive challenge for global governance. Therefore, it is crucial for normative political theorists to confront this problem. A realist approach offers three distinct advantages, elaborated in the three subsequent sections of the article. First, it relaxes the theoretical burden by starting from the real practice of tax evasion rather than from an abstract theory of equality or justice. Second, this approach recognizes that sheltering is a political harm: a threat to the very maintenance of order, not just a problem of inequality or injustice. If politicians fail at such polity maintenance, realism's ethic of responsibility provides clear political reasons why they should be held accountable. Third, realism's focus on power and its acceptance of coercion open up new strategies for addressing the problem that would not be allowed by theories with a stronger emphasis on consensus.

In this essay, I reflect on the divergent arguments about limited force made by Daniel R. Brunstetter and Samuel Moyn in their respective monographs. Arguing that their positions can be reconciled, I agree with Brunstetter that limited force has a role to play in establishing and maintaining a just world order. At the same time, however, I am mindful of Moyn's warning that limited force may lead to perpetual war. The way to ensure that limited force both works toward justice and does not result in perpetual war, I argue, is to focus more on considerations of jus ante bellum (right before war) and jus post bellum (right after war), the so-called “growing edges of just war theory.” I hold that the responsible use of statecraft, which just war thinking seeks to inform, accepts that limited force constitutes a legitimate tool to facilitate order, justice, and peace. However, any justifiable use of force must be restrained and limited and aim for a just peace. The embrace of limited force should thus be complemented with an effort by state leaders to bolster the edges of just war in order to facilitate a security environment that requires the use of limited force less frequently.

This essay suggests that the accountability trends explored by Stian Øby Johansen and Gisela Hirschmann in their respective monographs should be viewed as indicating the emergence of a right to justification in global governance. Both Johansen and Hirschmann seek to advance the interdisciplinary conversation about the accountability of international organizations—Johansen by developing a normative framework assessing the quality of IO accountability mechanisms, and Hirschmann by seeking to identify the variables that shape the evolution of what she calls pluralist accountability. Building upon their analyses, I put forward a set of hypotheses about the procedural and substantive dimensions of the right to justification as well as the conditions for its consolidation in global governance.