ABSTRACT
The most helpful way to make the distinction is to say that an account of justice is that part of the theory of morality that deals with the legitimate structure of institutions. In addition to a Hobbesian assessment of the international order as a state of war, there is another route to the conclusion that requirements of justice within communities are much stronger than those across communities. Although one of the roles of principles of justice is to specify the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of optional cooperation, this is not the only role, for there remains the specification of legitimate interference. John Rawls's proposed theories of national and international justice are subject to various sorts of criticism. His theory arbitrarily sets the scope of virtually all the requirements of distributive justice at the national level because those requirements are determined by representatives who ignore the possible needs of people in other nations.
