Daniel Butt

On Benefiting from Injustice

(2007). On Benefiting from Injustice. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 129-152.

Repairing historical wrongs and the end of empire

This article addresses the claim that some contemporary states may possess obligations to pay reparations as a result of the lasting effects of colonialism. Claims about the harms and benefits caused by colonialism must make some kind of comparison between the world as it currently is, and a counterfactual state where the injustice which characterized so much of the historic interaction between colonizers and the colonized did not occur. Rather than imagining a world where there was no interaction between such communities, this article maintains that the appropriate counterfactual state is one whereby relations between different communities took place in a context characterized by an absence of domination and exploitation. The conclusion is that there are good reasons to go beyond a focus on symbolic reparations and hold that many affluent contemporary states possess extensive but unfulfilled duties of rectificatory justice to some of the world’s poorest peoples.

The Polluter Pays? Backward-Looking Principles of Intergenerational Justice and the Environment

This chapter is concerned with the question of how best to allocate the costs of pollution stemming from human agency. It seeks to support two historical principles of remedial responsibility, the “beneficiary pays” principle and the “polluter pays” principle, as part of the general principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibility (CBDR), which places the primary burden of meeting the costs of pollution upon those communities which caused the pollution in the first place. The chapter argues that we can have reasons to pay the costs of pollution when we are members of communities which were responsible for the original polluting acts in question and/or which have benefited from the polluting acts. After explaining how these two accounts should properly be differentiated, it defends both from objections relating to the non-identity problem. It then outlines a particular version of the responsibility-based account which allocates remedial duties in connection with historic pollution to present day generations, based on their communities’ ongoing failure to rectify the effects of the original unjust polluting acts. The chapter concludes by examining the relevance of this model to the particular issue of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Global Equality of Opportunity as an Institutional Standard of Distributive Justice

We live in a world with a broad range of institutions whose actions affect the distribution of benefits and burdens both between and within particular political communities. As cooperation and interdependence between communities increases, so there is a greater need for overbridging institutions that regulate and control international interaction. We can expect both increases in the powers of existing international institutions and the development of significant new international institutions. Examples include international governmental bodies such as the General Assembly and Security Council of the United Nations and the Council of Ministers and European Parliament of the European Union (EU), international judicial bodies such as the European Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, international trade organizations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, and nongovernmental organizations, such as Oxfam or the Red Cross. By what standards should the decisions and actions of such institutions be assessed?