Most of the liberal moral and political debate concerning global poverty has focused on the duties of justice or assistance that the well-off have toward the needy. In this essay, I show how rights-based theories in particular have unanimously understood subsistence rights just (and only) as claims, where all it means to have a claim—following Hohfeld—is that others have a duty toward us. This narrow interpretation of subsistence rights has led to a glaring omission; namely, there has been no careful examination of what the rights-holders themselves may do to realize the object of their rights. Furthermore, in the few cases where this question gets posed, rights are again understood just (and only) as claims, but this time of an Austinian kind: rights-holders are limited to the performance of speech-acts like demanding, pleading, and entreating to make noncompliers fulfill their duties. I suggest that this approach betrays the original spirit of subsistence rights as individual moral powers delineating a sovereign sphere of action. More seriously, it is unjust to the rights-holders themselves, to the extent that many of the actions they undertake to realize the objects of their rights fall off the radar of moral analysis.

Recent debates over American liberalism have largely ignored one way of understanding democratic purposes that was widely influential for much of American history. This normative conception of democracy was inspired by philosophical ideas found in people such as John Stuart Mill and G. W. F. Hegel rather than by rights-based or civic republican theories. Walt Whitman and John Dewey were among its notable adherents. There is much that can be said on behalf of Richard Rorty's recent argument that American liberals would be well advised to recover and reclaim the heritage of Whitman and Dewey; but some additions and emendations to his construction of these champions of democracy would strengthen his case.

A norm of equal treatment is cited regularly in the American jurisprudence of property “takings” under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as a benchmark of fair treatment of owners. According to an increasingly prevalent version of this equality norm, courts should look to parity of treatment among property owners in investigating whether particular regulations “take” property. This essay argues, however, that such an equality norm is misplaced, and that courts should judge fairness by the criterion of expectation—including reasonable expectations of regulation.

A norm of equality becomes problematic in the face of the economic theory of the evolution of property. This theory posits that as resources become more congested, their uses carry increasing common pool costs or “externalities”—a scenario that should predictably result in more stringent resource management—up to and including the establishment of regulatory regimes as well as property rights themselves. This evolutionary pattern, however, places earlier and later resource users in different positions vis-à-vis both common pool externalities and regulatory responses, and their different temporal positions fragment the meaning of equal treatment and destabilize it as a jurisprudential norm. This essay argues that while equal treatment may be a benchmark for special or invidious cases, like those relating to civil rights, the great bulk of takings cases involve regulatory responses to congesting resources, where a norm of equal treatment breaks down. Thus, in seeking fair treatment, takings jurisprudence should downplay equality and instead look to the understanding of property as a basis of expectations—but those expectations should include the anticipation of reasonable regulatory responses to resource congestion.

In his famous book Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer articulates a thesis he calls the “Moral Equality of Soldiers,” namely, the principle that combatants have an equal right to kill other combatants in war, regardless of the justice of the cause for which they are fighting. The Moral Equality Thesis, as I shall call it, is an essential component of traditional Just War Theory, in that it provides the basis for distinguishing the jus in bello from the jus ad bellum. It also plays a crucial role in identifying the nature of the difference between combatants and civilians. The Moral Equality Thesis has recently come under attack by scholars of Just War Theory, notably philosopher Jeff McMahan, on the grounds that killing for immoral purposes cannot be justified, and so it cannot be true that combatants all have an equal right to kill, regardless of the justice of their cause. In this essay, I defend the Moral Equality Thesis in its traditional formulation. Without it, I argue, the rule of law would not apply in war. The failure to recognize the equal right of combatants to kill in war, I suggest, creates an inconsistency between the rules of war and basic concepts in the law and morality of self-defense, an inconsistency that McMahan himself would think undesirable. I argue that McMahan’s argument applies more compellingly to armed conflict in asymmetrical warfare. Arguably, the Moral Equality Thesis does not apply in an armed conflict between combatants and unlawful combatants. In that context, the divergence from the law and morality of self-defense is less of a concern.

This paper starts by addressing some objections to the very idea of aggregate social good. The paper goes on to review the case for letting aggregate social good be not only morally relevant but also sometimes morally decisive. Then the paper surveys objections to letting aggregate social good determine personal or political decisions. The paper goes on to argue against the idea that aggregate good is sensitive to desert and the idea that aggregate good should be construed as incorporating agent-relativity.

At present, Third World countries owe over one trillion dollars to the developed Western nations; much of the debt is held by the leading international commercial banks. The debt of six Latin American countries alone — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela — is over $330 billion, of which $240 billion is owed to commercial banks. Let us immediately narrow our focus to loans made by the major international commercial banks to Third World governments. We shall not be concerned with government-to-government loans, or private-party-to-private-party loans, or with debt owed to the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. The bank-to-government loans — the so-called “sovereign loans” — are the most economically troublesome and morally interesting. The largest lenders, at least with respect to the Latin American countries, are the American banks Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Bank of America, Manufacturers Hanover, and Chemical Bank. About fifteen Third World countries have serious debt problems, including the largest: Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina.

Rights might be regarded as an objectionable and even a dangerous feature of moral, political, and legal arrangements. It is an element of all (Hohfeldian) types of rights that Able's having right X entails requirements or prohibitions for Baker. These restrictions hold against Baker at Able's discretion, that is unless Able excuses Baker from respecting them. Nor are the restrictions merely decorative. We must presume that they are established because of the expectation that Baker would otherwise be disposed to interfere with the action Ms. Able's right warrants her in taking. Thus as writers as early as Spinoza have stressed, rights are powers – one might even say weapons – that Able may use against Baker. Of course, as a practical matter these “weapons” are frequently ineffective. Ms. Baker may willfully ignore her obligations and prevent Ms. Able from enjoying her entitlements. But such occurrences, as common and as unfortunate as they are, do not materially ease the task of justifying rights. It is only insofar as rights are effective, and hence only insofar as anyone will have reason to defend them, that they are weapons in Able's hands.

The possible privatization of Social Security has long been a matter of theoretical interest to those who ideologically favor free markets and maximum personal autonomy. But in the spirit of an age when the Berlin Wall fell and the totalitarian Soviet empire collapsed through a peaceful revolution from within, the politics of Social Security has been remade in recent years in a similarly dramatic fashion.

Neither a doctrine of rights nor a doctrine of justice can provide a non-question-begging foundation for political philosophy. Instead, all political philosophical theories must rest on the recognition of the existence of moral agents, individual members of a natural kind capable of entering into associations with other moral agents. Beginning with moral agency, we can deduce that for there to be any associations, political or otherwise, there has to be the mutual recognition of self-ownership. The nature of moral agency excludes the possibility that groups like states or societies or nations can be moral agents. From moral agency and self-ownership, we can deduce the exigency of property ownership. On this basis, we can explain a state of affairs as just when and only when there is no aggression against moral agents. And we can show that the only nonarbitrary right is the right to self-ownership and property ownership. Thus, A has a right to p means: to deprive A of p is unjust. So, rights are founded on justice and justice is founded on property and property is founded on self-ownership and the recognition of self-ownership is a necessary condition for the mutual recognition of moral agency, the only possible basis for the existence of human associations. Thus, rights and justice are derivative or dependent concepts; they are not basic or foundational.

There is a way of doing moral philosophy which goes something like this: If it can be shown that it is rational for perfectly selfish people to accept the constraints of morality, then it will follow, a fortiori, that it is rational for people capable of affective bonds, and thus less selfish, to do so. On this way of proceeding the real argument – that is, the argument for the actual constraints (theory or principles) to be adopted – proceeds with only fully rational individuals who have no other concern than to maximize their nontuistic (selfish) preferences. Then it is noted that the affective capacities of human beings actually make quite palatable the constraints that the fully rational persons with wholly nontuistic preferences have agreed upon.

How is one to set about the task of comparing capitalism and socialism in a systematic fashion? The contest between capitalism and socialism has many facets. It is both an intellectual debate about the relative merits of models of hypothetical social systems and a real and substantive historical struggle between two groups of states seen as representing capitalism and socialism. Perhaps the intellectual challenge to capitalism thrown down by Marxist thinkers and the “cold war” contest between the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. are such diverse phenomena that it is pointless and even misleading to try to treat them as part of a single problem. However, I believe that the dieoretical and historical aspects of the capitalism/socialism issue are directly related. I would argue that a full understanding of, say, the cold war is not possible without understanding the socialist critique of capitalism – and that a purely abstract comparison of capitalist and socialist models would fail to do justice to the historical and empirical essence of these two grand conceptual schemas.

In Section I, I expand upon these arguments, seeking to convince Utopian socialists that they should not continue to rely upon invocations of a hypothetical future, but must come up with some empirical examples of what socialism is and how it works. After all, it is more than a hundred years since Marx and Engels railed against Utopian socialists in favor of socialist arguments based on empirical reality. This is not to say that Marx and Engels were crude empiricists, accepting “facts” at face value.

What does the Soviet record tell us about the viability, effectiveness, and efficiency of socialism?

There are several questions that arise if one examines the Soviet experience, in addition to the comparative systems aspect (i.e., the comparison between capitalism and socialism). One question relates to the impact of the experience of the Soviet Union on theories of socialism, and also vice versa: the impact and relevance of socialist theory in assessing the Soviet system. Then there is the important issue of the role of specifically Soviet-Russian circumstances: traditions, political culture, and work ethic. A poet, Voloshin, wrote, “Velikii Pyotr byl pervyi bolshevik” (Peter the Great was the first bolshevik). The eminent philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev also remarked that “Peter's methods were purely bolshevik.” Leftists of a Trotskyist persuasion argue that the Soviet Union under Stalin took the wrong turn, that the Soviet Union is not socialist at all, that it is “state capitalist” – run by a “new bourgeoisie,” a bureaucratic ruling class—and continue to manufacture other variants on this theme.While official Soviet ideology claims that the U.S.S.R. is socialist and is following the principles laid down by Marx and Lenin, this can be questioned. One can indeed show that many aspects of the Soviet economic and political scene are at variance with the anticipations of Marx and of Lenin. But from this, one need not draw the conclusion that there was a “revolution betrayed,” but rather that some of these anticipations were unreal or unrealizable.

Reasonable people agree that whenever possible, we ought to rely on experts to tell us what is true or what the best course of action is. But which experts should we rely on and with regard to what issues? Here, I discuss several dangers that accompany reliance on experts, the most important one of which is this: positions that are offered as expert opinion frequently contain elements outside an expert’s domain of expertise, for instance, values not intrinsic to the given domain. I also talk about the practical implications of accepting my view.

In this essay, I explore the question of who should determine what an ambiguous tax statute means, the courts or the Department of Treasury. The answer to that question is based on two administrative law doctrines: Chevron and Brand X. Here, I explain why Chevron and Brand X violate the Administrative Procedure Act and are unworkable. Then, using a provision in the tax code, I propose that we return to a standard that is both consistent with the APA and easier to implement: Skidmore.

The scholarly literature suggests high or increased tax burdens tend to reduce economic growth, lowering incomes. Some argue, however, that low taxes and high economic growth can have adverse income distribution consequences or can lead to utility-reducing under-consumption of needed public goods. Evidence is presented questioning those assertions. People seek happiness by moving, and tend to migrate to low tax areas. Moreover, there is little evidence that governmental expansion leads to truly greater equality. Appropriately measured, income equality is actually far greater than typically claimed. Moreover, income data suggest that the international equalization of incomes and global reduction of poverty largely reflect private sector activity, namely market forces working where the rule of law and strong protection of property rights prevails.

This essay uses a specific example—proposals to exclude sugary drinks from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—to explore some features of the contemporary U.S. administrative state. Dating back to the Wilsonian origins of the U.S. administrative state there has been uncertainty about whether we can and should separate politics and administration. On the traditional view, the agencies are to be kept separate from politics—technocratic and value-neutral—although they are indirectly accountable to the president and Congress. The SNAP exclusions example shows, however, that agencies often must make complex and controversial decisions on their own, decisions that go beyond value-neutral technocratic administration. When authorizing legislation has multiple goals, as we’ll argue is the case in the SNAP example, an agency will have to choose between conflicting statutory mandates. Moreover, as the SNAP example shows, agencies often face complex normative questions of ethics and justice that go beyond the question of how to balance competing aims. The appropriate response to the SNAP exclusions example is not to keep politics out of administrative decision-making, but to develop procedures that allow ethical and political questions to be addressed in agency policy-making, consistent with overarching commitments to fairness and democracy.

As each individual abandons himself to the solicitous aid of the State,

so, and still more, he abandons to it the fate of his fellow-citizens.

Wilhelm Von Humboldt, On the Limits of State Action

In the wake of G. A. Cohen's masterful critique of Rawls's work, this paper discusses Rawlsian justice in general and the difference principle in particular. It argues that Rawlsian arguments for the difference principle present a puzzle and that to respond adequately to the puzzle we must engage in rational reconstruction. After explaining the puzzle and considering and rejecting a number of responses to it, the paper begins its reconstructive project. It presents the case for viewing the difference principle as a maximizing prioritarian principle of justice, one that that contains no trace of commitment to equality as a distributive norm. The paper concludes by bringing out some of the implications of viewing Rawlsian justice in this light.

Historically, critics of capitalism have had a great deal to say about the defects and social ills that afflict capitalist society and correspondingly little to say about how alternative institutional arrangements might solve these problems. One can only speculate about why this has been so. One reason might be a simple matter of priorities. Bertolt Brecht once said that when a man's house is on fire, one does not inquire too closely into alternative arrangements for shelter. The analogy between capitalism and a burning house may seem overwrought today, but in the dark days of the Depression of the 1930s it probably seemed more apt. Another explanation for the scant attention paid to alternatives to capitalism has to do with both the factual and ideological beliefs of capitalism's critics. If one believes (as, for example, Marx and Engels did) that the existing order would be destroyed by a mass movement, that new institutions would be constructed by the people in a democratic spirit, and that furthermore all of this would be a good thing, it would be unwise and counterproductive to try to spell out exactly where history is headed. After all, a genuine mass movement has little use for self-proclaimed prophets of history. Finally, men and women of modest intellectual pretensions might be humbled by the prospects of trying to spell out in any detail social institutions that should exist or might exist but are not as yet found anywhere in the world.