Global Justice

Global justice asks whether principles of justice (fairness, equality, rights and distribution of burdens and benefits) apply only within states or also across borders to all persons. It deals with global poverty and inequality, human rights, war and humanitarian intervention, climate change, trade, migration, and international institutions. The debate is between cosmopolitans, who hold that the same moral principles apply to all human beings wherever they live, and statists, nationalists or communitarians, who hold that principles of distributive justice arise only among members of a political community.

A Theory of Justice (1971) is the starting point of modern theories of justice.

• The original position and the veil of ignorance: free and equal persons choose principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance (they do not know their class, race, talents, conception of the good). This device ensures impartiality ('justice as fairness').

• The two principles of justice (in lexical order):

  1. Equal basic liberties: each person has an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme for others.

  2. Social and economic inequalities must (a) be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and (b) be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle, a 'maximin' idea).

• Primary goods: rights, liberties, opportunities, income, wealth and the social bases of self-respect.

• Reflective equilibrium: a method of adjusting principles and considered judgments until they cohere.

• Rawls versus utilitarianism: he rejects the sacrifice of the few for the greater good of the many; 'each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice'.

• Political Liberalism (1993): the idea of an overlapping consensus among reasonable comprehensive doctrines and public reason.

• The Law of Peoples (1999): Rawls's account of international justice. He extends the social contract idea to a 'second original position' among peoples (not individuals). He sets out eight principles: (1) peoples are free and independent and their freedom is to be respected; (2) peoples observe treaties; (3) peoples are equal and parties to the agreements that bind them; (4) peoples observe a duty of non-intervention; (5) peoples have the right of self-defence but no right to instigate war; (6) peoples are to honour human rights; (7) peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions in the conduct of war; (8) peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavourable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime.

• Five types of societies in The Law of Peoples: reasonable liberal peoples, decent (hierarchical) peoples, outlaw states, societies burdened by unfavourable conditions, and benevolent absolutisms.

• Duty of assistance, not global difference principle: Rawls holds that wealthy societies owe a duty of assistance to burdened societies until these can sustain just or decent institutions, but he rejects a global difference principle because (he argues) the wealth of a nation depends mostly on its political culture and not on the resources alone. This is the point on which cosmopolitan critics attack him.

Immanuel Kant: Perpetual Peace (1795): three 'definitive articles': (1) the civil constitution of every state should be republican; (2) the law of nations should be founded on a federation of free states; (3) cosmopolitan right shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality.

Charles Beitz: Political Theory and International Relations (1979), the first major cosmopolitan critique of Rawls. He argued that the global distribution of natural resources is arbitrary from a moral point of view, and proposed an international difference principle and a resource redistribution principle. The global economy shows enough interdependence to apply justice at the global level.

Thomas Pogge: Realizing Rawls (1989), World Poverty and Human Rights (2002).

• Argues that the wealthy nations and the global institutional order (trade rules, borrowing privileges, resource privileges) contribute to severe poverty and thus violate a negative duty not to harm (not merely a positive duty to assist).

• Proposes the Global Resource Dividend (GRD) (a small tax on the use of natural resources, the proceeds to help the global poor) and the Health Impact Fund (to reward drug companies for health impact rather than patent monopoly).

• Holds that poverty is a human rights deficit; the global order is institutional and the harm is foreseeable and avoidable.

Peter Singer: 'Famine, Affluence and Morality' (1972), One World (2002), The Life You Can Save (2009). A utilitarian argument that if we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought to do so; the drowning child analogy (the moral irrelevance of distance). He is a leading figure in the effective altruism movement.

Brian Barry: Humanity and Justice in Global Perspective (1982), Why Social Justice Matters (2005): global egalitarianism.

Martha Nussbaum: Frontiers of Justice (2006): the capabilities approach extended to disability, nationality and species membership; every person is entitled to a threshold of central capabilities, no matter where they live.

Amartya Sen: The Idea of Justice (2009): avoids a single blueprint of 'perfectly just institutions' and defends comparative, plural and open public reasoning, with 'open impartiality' (inviting perspectives from beyond the borders of one's community) as the way to reduce remediable injustice in the world.

Onora O'Neill: Bounds of Justice (2000), a Kantian cosmopolitan approach; Henry Shue: Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence and U.S. Foreign Policy (1980), arguing that security and subsistence are basic rights since the enjoyment of every other right depends on them, and creating correlative duties on everyone.

Nancy Fraser: Scales of Justice (2008): the problem of misframing (who counts as a subject of justice); three dimensions: redistribution, recognition and representation. Iris Marion Young: Responsibility for Justice (2011): the social connection model of responsibility, in which people who contribute through their actions to structural injustice share responsibility for remedying it.

• Thomas Nagel, 'The Problem of Global Justice' (2005): demands of distributive justice arise only among those who are jointly subject to a sovereign state, which imposes coercive laws in their name; across states there are only duties of humanity and minimal justice. He regards the world as lacking a global sovereign, so global justice is 'not yet' applicable.

• David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice (2007): defends nationality and special obligations to compatriots, but accepts that basic human rights must be respected everywhere (a 'sufficiency' threshold).

• Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (1983): different social goods are distributed by different principles, internal to the shared understandings of each community; Just and Unjust Wars (1977): the modern account of just war theory and the moral reality of war.

• Michael Blake: justice is triggered by coercion and the state's claim to authority.

• Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel: communitarian critics of Rawls's 'unencumbered self'.

(a) Global poverty and economic justice: trade rules (WTO), foreign debt (the HIPC initiative), tax havens, aid and the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNI for official development assistance; TRIPS and access to medicines (see Topic 8).

(b) Human rights and international criminal justice:

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); ICCPR and ICESCR (1966; in force 1976).

• Nuremberg (1945 to 1946) and Tokyo Tribunals; ICTY (1993) and ICTR (1994); the Rome Statute (1998; in force 2002) establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC). India is not a party to the Rome Statute.

• Universal jurisdiction: the Eichmann case (Israel, 1961); R v Bow Street Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, ex parte Pinochet (No. 3) (1999, House of Lords): a former head of state has no immunity for torture.

• Transitional justice: truth commissions (South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission), reparations and amnesties.

(c) Humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P):

• The ICISS Report (2001) 'The Responsibility to Protect', commissioned by Canada, introduced the idea that sovereignty implies responsibility.

• The 2005 World Summit Outcome Document (paragraphs 138 and 139) adopted R2P: each state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and the international community must act through the UN Security Council if the state manifestly fails. Applied (controversially) in Libya (Resolution 1973, 2011).

• Just war theory: jus ad bellum (just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, last resort, proportionality, reasonable prospect of success), jus in bello (discrimination, proportionality) and jus post bellum. Sources: Augustine, Aquinas, Grotius, Walzer.

(d) Climate justice:

• Stockholm (1972); Rio (1992) and UNFCCC (1992); Kyoto Protocol (1997); Paris Agreement (2015) (temperature limit well below 2 degrees Celsius, pursuing 1.5 degrees; Nationally Determined Contributions).

• Principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC) (Rio Principle 7): developed countries, which have contributed most to historical emissions, must take the lead. India has consistently argued for this principle and for climate finance and technology transfer.

• Loss and damage: a fund agreed at COP27 (Sharm el-Sheikh, 2022) and operationalised at COP28 (Dubai, 2023).

• Henry Shue drew the distinction between subsistence emissions and luxury emissions.

• Courts: the ICJ delivered an advisory opinion on states' obligations in respect of climate change (July 2025) (verify the details for the exam); the Indian Supreme Court in M.K. Ranjitsinh v Union of India (2024) recognised a right to be free from the adverse effects of climate change as part of Articles 14 and 21.

(e) Migration, refugees and statelessness:

• 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol: the principle of non-refoulement (a refugee must not be returned to a place of persecution). India is not a party, but follows the principle in parts through the Constitution and customary law.

• Joseph Carens, 'Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders' (1987): argued for open borders on liberal-egalitarian grounds. Walzer defended the right of communities to decide on membership.

• Indian cases: National Human Rights Commission v State of Arunachal Pradesh (1996) (Chakma refugees; Article 21 protects non-citizens too); Mohammad Salimullah v Union of India (2021) (the Rohingya deportation case).

(f) Global health and access to medicines: the TRIPS flexibilities and the Doha Declaration (2001); WHO; the debate over vaccine equity in the Covid-19 pandemic (COVAX; TRIPS waiver proposals).

(g) Indian constitutional links: Article 51 (promotion of international peace and security, respect for international law and treaty obligations); Article 253 (legislation to implement international agreements); Vishaka (1997) and Apparel Export Promotion Council v A.K. Chopra (1999) (international conventions read into domestic law where there is no conflict); Jolly George Varghese v Bank of Cochin (1980) (the ICCPR and imprisonment for debt).