ABSTRACT
What do we owe to people in other countries around the globe? What do others owe to us? What does morality require of nation states in their policies towards other nation states and towards people other than co-nationals? (On the latter, see Buchanan 2004 and Rawls 1999c). These questions define the subject matter of global justice theory. Philosophical thought on these issues goes back a long way, but the field is currently in an
unsettled state. This may not be bad. New ideas are in the wind, old assumptions are being questioned, and different lines of thought are being explored. This chapter surveys the current state of theoretical discussion, and offers some assessments of arguments and some indication of where the most promising lines of thought are going. In the end the reader will have to decide for herself or himself which ideas are worth further consideration and which should be discarded. “Justice” can mean many things. For the purposes of this chapter, the term will be used to
pick out fundamental moral duties or obligations that are, at least in principle, apt for coercive enforcement. There may well be moral duties, such as the duty to be loyal to friends, that are ineligible for enforcement: it would be morally wrong to try to force or compel people to fulfil these duties. Such duties would not qualify as justice requirements. In the absence of a global state or the equivalent, enforcement of global justice obligations is bound to be sporadic and uneven. Not only is actual enforcement hit or miss, but it can be unclear on what parties responsibility for enforcement ought to lie. Nonetheless, global justice duties, if such there be, ought to be enforced, and a theory of such duties should specify what the duties are and who is responsible for enforcing them. (Perhaps if some important global justice duties cannot be enforced in the absence of a global state, and they morally must be enforced, then we morally must establish a global state, contrary to common current views.) Global justice encompasses many types of issues. Some concern what is morally required in
international relations between states. Nation states fight wars, build empires, develop trade relations, and the question arises as to in what conditions such policies and acts are morally acceptable. Some global justice issues have to do with what individuals are morally required to do when their actions might have effects on people in other lands. These issues perhaps become more salient as global trade increases: when (for example) Canadians purchase electronics made in China, is a special tie to the producers thereby established? Global problems such as climate change affect people across the globe, and appear to call for cooperation among nations
and people on an enormous scale; one supposes a global justice theory should guide us in thinking about what would constitute a fair division of burdens and benefits of global cooperation. Especially in the decades since the Second World War, international bodies and nongovernmental agencies and lawyers and theorists have proclaimed human rights that are thought to be possessed by all people on Earth. Egregious violations of human rights warrant intervention, even armed intervention, on behalf of the victims, many claim, and how to balance the imperative of humanitarian intervention against traditional doctrines of state sovereignty and autonomy is currently unsettled. In this chapter the discussion focuses on a single (but widely ramifying) contentious issue. At
the level of fundamental moral principle, is it morally acceptable to favour members of one’s own nation over outsiders? If so, in what ways? And what might justify this moral tilt? Is partiality to co-nationals better regarded as allowed by justice principles or as morally mandatory? If justice dictates a set of moral requirements owed to co-nationals and another set owed to people generally, in each case, what are the shape and strength of the requirements?
