Sylvie Loriaux

Fairness in International Economic Cooperation : Moving beyond Rawlss Duty of Assistance

In this paper, I will argue that Rawls’s duty of assistance offers an incomplete picture of our international social and economic responsibilities. I will start by presenting the two main interpretations of the ‘Rawlsian circumstances of egalitarian distributive justice’ – the first requiring the existence of a ‘certain kind’ of cooperation, the second the existence of a ‘certain kind’ of interaction with the will – and then show that none of them rules out the applicability of international principles of egalitarian distributive justice. My argument will draw on societies’ participation in the World Trade Organisation (WTO). So, in the second section I will show that even though this organization is not endowed with a centralized coercive authority, its participants are asked to accept significant constraints on their behaviour and are therefore owed a special justification for these constraints. I will also suggest that the alleged voluntariness of this organization may not only be contested (especially when developing societies are involved), but may also not be sufficient to rule out requirements of distributive equality. In the third section, I will show that, as any system of cooperation, the WTO gives rise to requirements of fairness and that, given the purpose it claims to serve, not all inequalities that can be traced back to so-called ‘domestic’ factors can be considered justified. More specifically, I will argue that the fairness of the WTO requires that all its participants be given a fair chance of benefiting from global market competitions, and that this is likely to entail significant egalitarian distributive duties among societies.

World Poverty and the Concept of Causal Responsibility

Abstract This article approaches world poverty from the perspective of rectificatory justice and investigates whether the global rich can be said to have special obligations toward the global poor on the grounds that they have been harming them. The focus rests on the present situation, and more specifically on Thomas Pogge’s thesis of a causal link between world poverty and the conduct of present citizens (and governments) in wealthy countries. I argue that, if Pogge does not want his position to boil down to an institutional version of the ‘negative causation’-thesis - according to which one can cause harm simpiy by failing to alleviate it - and if he wants it to be accepted by those he seeks to convince - namely right-libertarians - he must specify that it is enough for institutions to be just that they do not actively deprive their members of the means of subsistence, even if many of them still do not have the capacity to enjoy the means of subsistence.

Beneficence and distributive justice in a globalising world

This paper argues that distributive justice requires a higher degree of enforceability and responsibility than beneficence and that therefore the current world order gives us strong reasons to recognise a global duty of justice to help the poor satisfy their basic needs. It proceeds in three steps. The first part considers the conceptual distinction between duties of justice and duties of beneficence. The second part examines the role that international institutions might play in activating duties of justice, by focusing on two dichotomies that are often used in order to distinguish between beneficence and justice, namely the imperfection/perfection dichotomy and the non-enforceability/enforceability dichotomy. In this respect, it is argued that perfection and enforceability of duties are necessary but not sufficient conditions for distributive duties to be conceived as duties of distributive justice. Therefore, the third part proposes an additional dichotomy focusing on the distinct moral reasons that underlie duties of beneficence and duties of distributive justice, namely the corrective/causal responsibility dichotomy.

Grotius and Kant on Original Community of Goods and Property

This paper is interested in the critical potential of the idea of original common possession of the Earth. On the basis of a comparative analysis of Hugo Grotius and Immanuel Kant, it shows how different the meaning of this idea can be within a theory of property or territory. The first part is devoted to Grotius’s account of why and how the institution of property was progressively introduced. It highlights the importance this account attaches to the intention of the first distributors for a good understanding of property laws, and in particular, for an understanding of their non-application in situations of extreme necessity. The second part takes the opposite path and shows that although Kant rejects the very existence of a right of necessity, the idea that one might be liberated from a law is not completely absent from, and even plays a crucial role in, his account of property. Clarification of this role ultimately leads us back to the idea of original possession in common of the Earth.

International Trade, Fairness, and Labour Migration

Abstract This paper aims to show that fairness in trade calls for relaxing existing WTO rules to include a greater liberalisation of labour migration. After having addressed several objections to global egalitarianism, it will argue, first, that the world’s rich and the world’s poor participate in a same multilateral trading system whose point is primarily to reduce trade barriers, and hence to establish global economic competitions, in order to raise their standards of living; second, that these competitions are subject to requirements of formal and substantive fairness; and, third, that the substantive fairness of the competitions that are taking place in the field of trade in goods is likely to require a greater liberalisation of labour migration, especially low-skilled labour from developing countries.

Hobbesian Sovereigns and the Question of Supra-State Authority

Thomas Hobbes has often been portrayed as one of the main representatives of the ‘realist’ tradition in international political theory. An important aspect of this tradition is its depiction of the international sphere as a sphere devoid of constraints on states’ behaviour: states are free to do whatever they believe advances the national interest and have no obligation to accept any limitation on their pursuit of the national interest. Now, it is true that Hobbes conceives of the international sphere as a condition of war, that is, as a condition in which sovereigns have a known disposition to fight and in which they can expect the worst from each other. Their raison d’être being to procure the safety of their people (salus populi), Hobbesian sovereigns have a right of self-preservation understood as a freedom to do whatever they deem most conducive to the security and prosperity of their state. But the absence of a common superior authority defining and enforcing the rules that are to govern their interactions means that each of them must be his own judge and rely on his own power to enforce his judgments, which leads them to view each other with distrust and fear, as enemies, and pressures them to continually increase their relative power. From this, it is a small step to saying that everything is permitted between sovereigns: that they may renege on their agreements, engage in deceptive behaviour or wage aggressive wars whenever they believe this ‘somehow’ advances the interest of the state. Given the insecurity that characterises international relations, sovereigns have no reason to accept constraints on the pursuit of national interest; ‘The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Force, and Fraud, are in warre the two Cardinall vertues.’1 This pessimistic view is, somewhat paradoxically, reinforced by Hobbes’s claim that ‘because [sovereigns] uphold thereby, the Industry of their Subjects; there does not follow from it, that

Deception, right, and international relations: A Kantian reading

The general aim of this paper is to elucidate Kants juridical understanding of the duty not to lie and to situate it within his account of ‘The right of a state’ and of ‘The right of nations’. The first section will introduce the distinction Kant draws between two senses in which a liar can be said to wrong another, namely, ‘materially’ and ‘formally’. The second section will be devoted to clarifying what Kant means by a ‘formal wrong’ (or a ‘wrong in general’), by focusing on his use of this concept in the context of international relations. The third section will examine why a liar can be said to always do wrong ‘formally’. And the fourth section will show that what holds for individuals also holds for states in their mutual relationships: they are never to deceive one another, not even when innocent lives are at stake, because doing so would ‘subvert the right of human beings as such’.

On the Ground and Content of our Obligations to Future Generations

Intergenerational justice is one of those philosophical topics that are currently gaining the attention of researchers, policymakers and the public at large. In a way, it is not a new field of inquiry: political philosophers have long been concerned with the potentially adverse effects of human actions on future generations, as witnessed by longstanding debates about the limits and transmissibility of property rights and public debt. What is new, however, is the scope and intensity that this reflection has recently reached. Among the reasons for this surge of interest is undoubtedly our increased capacity to affect future generations. While technological progress has made it possible for us to attain high standards of living, it also includes the risk of endangering the life conditions or even the survival of millions of people in the future (think, for instance, of climate change, deforestation, genetically modified organisms, or cloning experiments). To this can be added the deep humanitarian concerns raised by the Third World debt crisis; numerous claims for reparation for historical injustice such as racial discrimination, slavery and colonialism; and significant changes in the demographic composition of some countries and the worries they engender about the sustainability of existing social security systems. As people have become aware of their responsibility for bringing about, but also for avoiding, far-reaching harmful effects, they have begun to acknowledge the importance of deepening their understanding of what generations may be said to owe to each other. Interestingly, this reflection has brought into relief a number of distinctive normative challenges. A first concerns the very possibility of intergenerational obligations. Does the idea of obligations owed to people who do not presently exist (such as people who did exist in the past or who will or could exist in the future) make sense? This is the so-called ‘non-existence’ challenge. Does the idea of a present generation harming a future one make sense given the capacity of the former, through its (2012) 3(1) Jurisprudence 263–266