Rectifying International Injustice: Principles of Compensation and Restitution Between Nations

by Daniel Butt

Overview

The history of international relations is characterized by widespread injustice. What implications does this have for those living in the present? Many writers have dismissed the moral urgency of rectificatory justice in a domestic context, as a result of their forward-looking accounts of distributive justice. Rectifying International Injustice argues that historical international injustice raises a series of distinct theoretical problems, as a result of the popularity of backward-looking accounts of distributive justice in an international context. It lays out three morally relevant forms of connection with the past, based in ideas of benefit, entitlement and responsibility. Those living in the present may have obligations to pay compensation to those in other states insofar as they are benefiting, and others are suffering, as a result of the effects of historic injustice. They may be in possession of property which does not rightly belong to them, but to which others have inherited entitlements. Finally, they may be members of political communities which bear collective responsibility for an ongoing failure to rectify historic injustice. Rectifying International Injustice considers each of these three linkages with the past in detail. It examines the complicated relationship between rectificatory justice and distributive justice, and argues that many of those who resist cosmopolitan demands for the global redistribution of resources have failed to appreciate the extent to which past wrongdoing undermines the legitimacy of contemporary resource holdings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191551154
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	11/20/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	350 KB

About the Author

Daniel Butt was appointed Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Oriel College, Oxford in 2004. He studied Politics at undergraduate and graduate level at Wadham College, Oxford, prior to a three year appointment as Research Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford between 2001 and 2004. He is a member of the Centre for the Study of Social Justice, and Director of the Programme on Courts and the Making of Public Policy for the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society. Rectifying International Injustice is the culmination of eight years of research on the question of international rectificatory justice.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Rectifying International Injustice-The Real World Context 1

1.2 Theory and Practice 6

1.3 Terminology 22

2 Why Worry about Historic Injustice? 31

2.1 The Distinctiveness of International Rectificatory Justice 31

2.2 Does History Have Ethical Significance? 34

2.3 Departures from Initially Just Distributions 37

2.4 Departures from Initially Unjust Distributions 41

3 International Libertarianism 58

3.1 International Libertarianism as an Account of Distributive Justice 58

3.2 The Principles of Just International Interaction 65

3.2.1 Core Principles of Just International Interaction 66

3.2.2 Further Principles of Just International Interaction 67

3.3 Judging Historical International Interaction 72

3.3.1 Historically Different Beliefs about Justice 73

3.3.2 The Recent Development of International Law 75

3.3.3 Justifiable or Excusable Departures from the Principles 79

4 Compensation for Historic International Injustice 97

4.1 International Compensatory Justice 97

4.2 Identifying the Morally Relevant Counterfactual 102

4.3 Counterfactuals and Relational Justice 115

4.4 Benefiting from Injustice 117

4.4.1 Benefit and Duties of Assistance 118

4.4.2 Benefit and the Effects of Injustice 122

4.4.3 From Theory to Practice-Problems of Measuring Benefit 130

5 Restitution and Inheritance 140

5.1 The Inheritance Model of Rectificatory Justice 140

5.2 The Justifiability of Inheritance 141

5.2.1 Property and Possession (1) 145

5.2.2 International Libertarianism and Historical Entitlement 148

5.2.3 Property and Possession (2) 160

5.3 Inheritance and Indeterminacy 162

6 Nations, Overlapping Generations, and HistoricInjustice 174

6.1 The Significance of National Identity 174

6.2 The Nature of Rectificatory Duties 176

6.3 Nations and Collective Responsibility 178

6.4 Nations and Overlapping Generations 183

6.5 Historic Justified Rights Infringements and Present Day Obligations 188

Conclusion 195

Bibliography 199

Index 211