Chapter 6 looks at three prominent consequentialist strategies that have been employed more recently to justify different forms of the legislative perspective as well as a fourth option that is Kantian. The first option, exemplified by Robert Goodin, Conrad Johnson, and Frederick Schauer, is to restrict legislative consequentialism’s scope to the design of rules, policies, and institutions. The second option, pursued by Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, is to follow Sidgwick and accept a disjunction between moral rules and moral right (or between decision rules and the standard of right). The third option, used by Brad Hooker, seeks to justify a consequentialist legislative perspective based on its fit with our moral judgments using something akin to a reflective equilibrium approach rather than having consequentialism itself be the foundation. The chapter then considers a very different fourth option where the shift to a legislative point of view depends on Kantian claims as seen in the work of Thomas Hill, Jr. and Derek Parfit. Each of these approaches, however, includes serious drawbacks.

The chapter contains an overview of the main strands of philosophy and schools of thought that have influenced contemporary immigration policies, including the perception of a duty to admit persons who are in a vulnerable situation. Are there moral obligations that would qualify a state’s absolute sovereignty in deciding who should be admitted? Humanitarianism, as a norm, but also as an ideology in itself, has increasingly become a recognized part of state policies domestically as well as in foreign policy. Theories relating to assistance to those in need in foreign lands, including medical humanitarianism, have merged with domestic policy goals. The norm that often competes with humanitarianism is that of the national interests of states in terms of maintaining political and economic stability of their countries and concerns in regard to foreign policy.