ABSTRACT
The thinness of the Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) commissioners’ justification for their two foundational claims surely originates in concern over the possibility that a thicker account of the ontological bases for moral community would open them up to charges of, at worst, cultural imperialism, and at best, cultural insularity. In Habermasian terms, what the ICISS approach seeks is an expansion of our legal communities to make them isomorphic with the ideal moral community of all persons. ICISS underscores the profound undesirability of such a course of conduct, and emphasizes its potential for undercutting “the stature and credibility” of the UN. States alone are designated as agents assigned the responsibility to protect on ICISS’s, and all subsequent, accounts. The ICISS commissioners advocate a top-down method of expanding the pool of persons subject to mutual legal claims, via the intermediary of states.
