1,720,976 research outputs found
Evaluating International Agreements: The Voluntarist Reply and its Limits
Get PDFHow should the fact of state consent to international agreements affect their moral evaluation? Political criticism of the content of international agreements is often answered by invoking the voluntary nature of those agreements: if states did not wish to accept their terms then they were free to reject them; the fact of their having voluntarily accepted them limits the scope for subsequent criticism. This is the “Voluntarist Reply”. This paper examines the Voluntarist Reply to understand the specific moral work that it claims to do, the sense of voluntariness that it requires, and the limits on the capacity of voluntary consent to answer substantive political and moral criticism . It maps those limits across four prominent and plausible accounts of international economic justice to understand the different ways that consent does or does not alter the moral situation
On Trade Justice, Power and Institutions – Some Questions for Risse and Wollner
Get PDFWhile Risse and Wollner make an important contribution to theorising global justice and trade, I identify certain concerns with their approach and suggest an alternative that addresses these. First, I query their emphasis on
subjection to the trade regime as a morally salient feature, suggesting their argument trades on an ambiguity, and fails to connect the trade regime, as a
trigger, with their preferred account of trade-justice-as-non-exploitation. Second, I examine their treatment of the WTO, how they understand international
organisations as inheritors of states’ obligations, and how far an organisation like the WTO can or should be self-consciously reoriented towards justice-as-non-exploitation. Third, I ask how their account is distinct from existing approaches, and whether it makes sense to apply the same conception of justice across diverse agents and institutions. I conclude by sketching an alternative
approach, which makes the justification of states’ policies to outsiders the central problem of trade justice
Debt, Default and Two Liberal Theories of Justice
No full textThere is a fundamental disconnect between the public discourse about sovereign and external debt in comparison to private domestic debt. The latter is predominantly viewed through a Humean lens, which sees economic morality in terms of contingent social institutions, justified by the valuable goods they realize; while sovereign and external debt is viewed through a Lockean lens, which sees property, contract, and debt as possessing an intrinsic moral quality, independent of social context or consequences. This Article examines whether this Lockean perspective on sovereign and external debt is compatible with the dominance of Humean approaches to the domestic economy. It considers and rejects the most plausible argument for reconciling these views, which emphasizes the different qualities of cooperation in the international and domestic economies. It further argues that many standard objections to a Humean approach to sovereign debt suggest, not the Lockean approach, but rather a Hobbesian international moral skepticism. Concluding that the Lockean approach is unmotivated, this Article instead advances a Humean account of sovereign debt and default. It shows how taking seriously the demand for institutional justification and the idea of persons and peoples as free and equal provides an account of the duties of states—whether creditors, debtors or third parties—in sovereign debt crises. It further examines the implications of each approach for democratic choice about sovereign default
The Puzzle of Competitive Fairness
Get PDFThere is a sense of fairness that is distinctive of markets. This is fairness among economic competitors, competitive fairness. We regularly make judgments of competitive fairness about market participants, public policies and institutions. However, it is not clear to what these judgments refer, or what moral significance they have. This paper offers a rational reconstruction of competitive fairness in terms of non-domination. It first identifies competitive fairness as a distinctive claim, advanced within markets in turn characterised as antagonistic, instrumental and procedural. It distinguishes competitive fairness from a number of familiar ideals with which it might be confused: legitimate expectation, equality of opportunity, sporting fairness and economic efficiency. While many exponents likely assume competitive fairness can be explained in terms of one of these ideals, in each case there are significant objections to doing so. Instead, the paper argues that the most promising justification of competitive fairness is under the republican ideal of non-domination, which can reconstruct many of the intuitive judgments of competitive fairness that we make in particular cases. However, it concludes, this explanation makes it difficult for exponents to continue to emphasise competitive fairness, given diverse other risks of domination, and to other values, in markets
CETA and the Investor Court System: Submission to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs
Get PDFPoverty and Justice: Competing Lenses on International Economic Law:Review Essay reviewing John Linarelli (ed.), Research Handbook on Global Justice and International Economic Law. Chelthenham: Edward Elgar, 2013. and Krista Nadakavukaren Schefer (ed.), Poverty and the International Economic Legal System: Duties to the World’s Poor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
No full textDebt, Default, and Two Liberal Theories of Justice
No full textThere is a fundamental disconnect between the public discourse about sovereign and external debt in comparison to private domestic debt. The latter is predominantly viewed through a Humean lens, which sees economic morality in terms of contingent social institutions, justified by the valuable goods they realize; while sovereign and external debt is viewed through a Lockean lens, which sees property, contract, and debt as possessing an intrinsic moral quality, independent of social context or consequences. This Article examines whether this Lockean perspective on sovereign and external debt is compatible with the dominance of Humean approaches to the domestic economy. It considers and rejects the most plausible argument for reconciling these views, which emphasizes the different qualities of cooperation in the international and domestic economies. It further argues that many standard objections to a Humean approach to sovereign debt suggest, not the Lockean approach, but rather a Hobbesian international moral skepticism. Concluding that the Lockean approach is unmotivated, this Article instead advances a Humean account of sovereign debt and default. It shows how taking seriously the demand for institutional justification and the idea of persons and peoples as free and equal provides an account of the duties of states—whether creditors, debtors or third parties—in sovereign debt crises. It further examines the implications of each approach for democratic choice about sovereign default
Rules and Values in International Adjudication: The Case of the WTO Appellate Body
Get PDFCurrent political challenges facing the WTO Appellate Body raise fundamental questions about the relationship between rules and values in international adjudication. This paper applies insights from legal philosophy to identify the role values should play in WTO adjudication. It argues that nothing about the specifics of WTO law would justify excluding values from adjudication; that the doctrinal, political and institutional context of WTO adjudication makes a positivist account of the role of values untenable; but an anti-positivist account requires complementing established economic accounts of WTO law’s purpose with an account of fairness and justice in trade and trade regulation
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