International Distributive Justice
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Description
In this essay, I investigate the application of the concept of justice to relations among states in contrast to the more familiar issues of justice arising within states. My starting point is that contractarian theory, in the form developed by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice, enormously clarifies critical discussion of arguments about distributive justice in the forms in which they arise within developed industrial states. In what way, if at all, can or should this analytic framework be deployed in the analysis and explication of issues of justice outside this context, for example, claims of justice between or among states or claims of intergenerational justice? This chapter addresses the problem of international distributive justice, by way of an examination of certain difficulties that contractarian theory allegedly experiences in this area. In general, I defend the coherent plausibility of contractarian theory in providing foundations for strong moral duties in the international area, both of mutual aid for persons in life-endangering distress (in the form suggested by Peter Singer, and more precisely elaborated by Brian Barry), and of redistributive justice along the lines of Rawls's difference principle (in line with early suggestions of David Richards and Brian Barry, and the more recent elaboration of Charles Beitz.)
Source Publication
Ethics, Economics, and the Law
Source Editors/Authors
J. Roland Pennock, John W. Chapman
Publication Date
1982
Recommended Citation
Richards, David A. J., "International Distributive Justice" (1982). Faculty Chapters. 2089.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/2089
