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Contractualism and Global Justice: The Iteration Proviso

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Richard Vernon
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Extract

While Rawls himself put contractualism to work at the national level, his more cosmopolitan followers have argued that the full requirements of international justice can be reached only by way of a global contractualist argument. Both positions neglect a resource from within the contractualist tradition, The need for iteration of the nation-level contract gives rise to strong and reasonably definite moral requirements. A good-faith adoption of the contractual argument entails, first, a duty to assist those whose potential recourse to just arrangements is blocked by tyranny or political collapse. Second, understood as a net risk-reducing project, a nation-level contract entails a duty not to impede the iterated risk-reduction projects of other national soceties. Envisaging the duty in this contractualist way avoids problems that beset both "natural duty" and "interactionist" approaches to international justice. The non-impedance requirement bears especially on international economic arrangements. The institutional representation of those affected by such arrangements would connect this abstract requirement with practical conclusions.

Type
Research Article
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Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , July 2006 , pp. 345 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2006

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References

An earlier version of this paper was read to the Department of Philosophy at The University of Western Ontario. My thanks to those who participated, as well as to Joseph Carens, Charles Jones and Kirsten Fisher for helpful comments.

1. See especially Beitz, Charles H., Political Theory and International Relations, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999 [first published 1979])Google Scholar, and Pogge, Thomas, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

2. A charge made as long ago as 1973 by Barry, Brian in The Liberal Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973) at 28–33.Google Scholar

3. Nagel, Thomas, for example, finds the cosmopolitan Rawlsians deficient in this regard: “The Problem of Global Justice” (2005) 33 Phil. & Pub. Affairs 113 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The objection comes from moral dualists such as Nagel, and Scheffler, Samuel, Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar and from nationalists such as Miller, David in On Nationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).Google Scholar

4. See Gibbard, Alan, “Constructing Justice” (1991) 20 Phil. & Pub. Affairs 264.Google Scholar

5. Scheffler, supra note 3 at 84-85.

6. Mill, John Stuart, “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” in Robson, John, ed., Collected Works, vol. 13 (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1984) 109.Google Scholar

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16. Ibid. at 195.

17. Charvet, John, “International Society from a Contractarian Perspective” in Mapel, David R. & Nardin, Terry, eds., International Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998) 114.Google Scholar

18. Ibid. at 120. While I agree that “moral life” must in some sense “come about” in social relations, the idea of contractualism entertained in this paper must obviously reject the critique of moral realism that Charvet associates with that idea. For some critical remarks on Charvet’s view, see Chris Brown, “Contractarian Thought and the Constitution of International Society” in Mapel & Nardin, ibid. 132.

19. I don’t believe that one can evade the requirements by embracing the radical partialist option, at least if one wishes to retain a case for political obligation, for there simply is no reason to think that the bounds of obligation marked out by that option will resemble the boundaries of states.

20. This is of course merely a brief abstract statement of a view that needs much concrete elaboration. Among many excellent recent discussions, see Holzgrefe, J.L. & Keohane, Robert O., eds., Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. James Bohman also attempts to support such a conclusion, using a “republican” rather than a contractualist approach: but I believe his argument is exposed to the same difficulties as other versions of interactionism. See Bohman, James, “Republican Cosmopolitanism” (2004) 12 J. Pol. Phil. 336.CrossRefGoogle Scholar