distributive justice conclusion essay

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By Michelle Maiese

Originally published in June 2003; updated in June 2013 by Heidi Burgess, Current Implications added by Heidi Burgess in July 2020

Current Implications

Calls for "racial justice" are being voiced frequently and loudly around the U.S., and indeed, the whole world, in the summer of 2020, following the death of George Floyd in late May.  While much of the attention is being paid to ending racially-motivated police brutality, people are also taking a broader look at racially-motivated distributional injustice. Despite efforts made in the 1960's "Great Society programs," as well as with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Black income, wealth, and education still trail Whites' by a lot.   More...

The Notion of Fair Distribution

Distributive justice is concerned with the fair allocation of resources among diverse members of a community. Fair allocation typically takes into account the total amount of goods to be distributed, the distributing procedure, and the pattern of distribution that results.

In Global Distributive Justice , Armstrong distinguishes between distributive justice generally and principles of distributive justice.[1]. Armstrong defines distributive justice as the ways that the benefits and burdens of our lives are shared between members of a society or community. Principles of distributive justice tell us how these benefits and burdens ought to be shared or distributed.[2].

Because societies have a limited amount of wealth and resources, the question of how those benefits ought to be distributed frequently arises. The common answer is that public assets should be distributed in a reasonable manner so that each individual receives a "fair share." But this leaves open the question of what constitutes a "fair share."

Various principles might determine of how goods are distributed. Equality, equity, and need are among the most common criteria.[3] If equality is regarded as the ultimate criterion determining who gets what, goods will be distributed equally among all persons. (In other words each person will get the same amount.) However, due to differences in levels of need, this will not result in an equal outcome. (For example, every incoming freshman to a local college with a grade point above 3.0 might be offered a $500 scholarship. This is a nice reward for students and parents who can afford the remaining tuition, but is of no help to families that cannot afford the additional $6000/year fee to attend the school.)

Another possibility is to proceed according to a principle of equity, and distribute benefits in proportion to the individuals' contribution. Thus, those who make a greater productive contribution to their group deserve to receive more benefits. (Thus, in theory, people who work harder in more valuable jobs should earn more money.) This sort of distribution is typically associated with an economic system where there is equal opportunity to compete. In competitive systems, wealth or goods might also be distributed according to effort or ability.

Or, we might distribute goods according to need, so that an equal outcome results. Those who need more of a benefit or resource will receive more, as occurs when colleges offer needs-based scholarships, or states provide welfare payments to the poor.

Some suggest a system of competition that includes safety nets for those who cannot compete. This sort of system combines the principle of equity with that of need. It attempts to reward people for their productivity at the same time that it ensures their basic needs are met.

Finally, we might distribute resources according to social utility, or what is in the best interests of society as a whole.  This is the argument that is frequently made by high-paid executives, who not only argue that they deserve their high salaries because of their contributions to their businesses, but they also argue that they are the "job creators," thus paying them highly benefits society as a whole. Others, however, think taxing them highly and using the income to provide services to the less fortunate would be of greater overall benefit to the society.

The Significance of Distribution Procedures and Outcomes

Different sorts of distributions advance different social goals. For a society to function effectively, it must keep its membership, engage in efficient and effective production, and sustain the well-being of its members.[4] The principles of distributive justice arise out of these concerns. Equal distribution is thought to give people a sense of full-fledged membership. Equity fosters the motivation to produce, to be rewarded for one's productivity. Lastly, distribution according to need ensures that everyone's basic and essential needs are met, which is not only good for the individual, but makes criminal and political violence less likely as well. 

Because these principles are often in tension with one another, one of them is typically regarded as the central criterion of distribution. Depending on which principle is adopted, an economic system characterized by equality, competition, or social welfare safety nets will arise.

Some believe that what makes a distribution just is the final outcome, while others believe that what matters are the rules followed in determining that distribution. Even in those cases where the outcome is a fair distribution of resources, the procedures used to arrive at that distribution might be unjust. Conversely, a fair procedure might result in an unfair distribution.

In his Theory of Justice , John Rawls claims that one's place of birth, social status, and family influences are matters of luck that should not unduly influence the amount of benefits we receive in life. He maintains that the job of distributive justice is to limit the influence of luck so that goods might be distributed more fairly and to everyone's advantage.

Robert Nozick, on the other hand, believes that distributive justice is a matter of setting down rules that individuals should follow in acquiring and transferring resources and benefits. The aim of distributive justice is not to achieve any particular outcome of distribution, but rather to ensure a fair process of exchange.

Others think that distributive justice must be a matter of both process and outcome.

They believe that the processes of distribution must be fair in order for people to feel that they have received a fair outcome. Insofar as it is linked to the notion of fair processes, distributive justice has ties to concerns about procedural justice .

In some cases, the thing to be distributed is not a benefit, but a burden. For example, one might be concerned with the fairness of allocation of punishments, which is connected to retributive justice .  Or one might be concerned about the fairness of distribution of burdens--such as who should pay for medical care for the uninsured, or who should have to live next to a dump or a jail.

Why Distributive Justice Matters

According to the theory of relative deprivation, a sense of injustice is aroused when individuals come to believe that their outcome is not in balance with the outcomes received by people like them in similar situations.[5] When people have a sense that they are at an unfair disadvantage relative to others, or that they have not received their "fair share,"  they may wish to challenge the system that has given rise to this state of affairs. This is especially likely to happen if a person or groups' fundamental needs are not being met, or if there are large discrepancies between the "haves" and the "have-nots." This is particularly apparent in both Europe and the Middle East in 2013, but is also going on, to a lesser extent (and much less violently) in the U.S. where the distribution of wealth is getting more and more unequal. (See Rich/Poor Conflicts)

While it is clear to most people (at least in the US) that skin color or religion should not be valid criteria of distribution, real-life experience suggests that such factors often turn out to be quite significant. In the United States, as elsewhere, issues of distributive justice are connected to concerns about systemic poverty and racism, and questions about the fairness of affirmative action -- policies that grant preferential treatment to particular racial or gender groups.

Societies in which resources are distributed unfairly can become quite prone to social unrest. For example, "since the colonial period, unfair land distribution and the prevailing agricultural economic system have been the prime causes of armed and civil resistance in Guatemala ."[6] While national and international elites enjoy largely unrestricted access to communal lands expropriated from the Maya, the majority of Guatemalans live in poverty, on farms smaller than those required to feed the average family. This sort of land distribution violates principles of equality, equity, and need, and therefore generates conflict.  

Redistribution of benefits can sometimes help to relieve tensions and allow for a more stable society. However, redistribution always has losers, and they often initiate a conflict of their own. This is apparent in the US, where opposition to affirmative action has always been strong.  Similar policies preferentially treating Maylays and indigenous people in Malaysia is currently (2013) leading to tension and conflict--though not violence, at least as of yet.  Although always challenging, to the extent that re-distribution can be enacted by the government through what is widely perceived to be a legitimate decision making process, success is more likely to be achieved.  If the redistribution process is seen as illegitimate, renewed conflict is a more likely outcome.  

Balancing out gross inequalities of wealth might also be part of compensatory justice after periods of war. During periods of postwar adjustment and peacebuilding efforts, long-term economic policy must aim to achieve equity, or balance in the distribution of income and wealth. Issues of distributive justice are in this way central to any peacebuilding or reconstruction program . Such efforts to ensure a just distribution of benefits following conflict are typically accompanied by democratization efforts to ensure a more balanced distribution of power as well.

Calls for "racial justice" are being voiced frequently and loudly around the U.S., and indeed, the whole world, in the summer of 2020, following the death of George Floyd in late May.  While much of the attention is being paid to ending racially-motivated police brutality, people are also taking a broader look at racially-motivated distributional injustice. Despite efforts made in the 1960's "Great Society programs," as well as with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Black income, wealth, and education still trail Whites' by a lot. 

At the same time, Blacks suffer a disproportiate number of "bads" (as opposed to goods).  Of particular concern in the summer of 2020, they are being much harder hit by the novel Coronavirus than are Whites.  They are incarcerated more than whites (see procedural justice ), they are victims of crime more than Whites, they live in neighborhoods stricken with environmental hazards more than whites. 

So in addition to calls for retributive justice (to punish the officers who killed George Floyd) and procedural justice (to improve the way policing is done in the future), "racial justice" must include fundamental changes in the way goods and "bads" are distributed in our societies so that Blacks, other minority groups, and "left-behind" Whites are treated more fairly. 

A first step would be to decide what we mean by "more fairly."  Is it, as this article discusses, "equity, equality, or need?"  Likely, I would argue, it is a combination of all three.  It is high time that we start looking at the issue of distributive justice: deciding what it means and how it should be pursued for Blacks, for other minority groups, and for whites who shouldn't be treated unjustly either, lest their anger fuel a continuing (potentially even violent) conflict.

-- Heidi Burgess. July, 2020.

[1] Chris Armstrong , Global Distributive Justice: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2012). < http://books.google.com/books?id=LJU0djAZ1osC >.

[2]. See also: Nicolas Rescher, Fairness: Theory & Practice of Distributive Justice (Transaction Publishers, 2002). < http://www.amazon.com/Fairness-Theory-Practice-Distributive-Justice/dp/0765801108 >.

[3] Robert T. Buttram, Robert Folger, and B.H. Sheppard, "Equity, Equality and Need: Three Faces of Social Justice," In Conflict, Cooperation, and Justice: Essays Inspired by the Work of Morton Deutsch , eds. B.B. Bunker and Morton Deutsch (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 1995), 261. < http://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Cooperation-Justice-Inspired-Deutsch/dp/0787900699 >.

[4] Buttram, Robert T., Robert Folger, and B.H. Sheppard, 263.

[5] Morton Deutsch, "Justice and Conflict." In The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice , ed. M. Deutsch and P.T. Coleman (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 2000), 43. More recent edition (2011) available here .

[6] Murga, Gustavo Palma. "Promised the Earth: Agrarian Reform in the Guatemalan Socio-Economic Agreement" (1997).< http://www.beyondintractability.org/library/external-resource?biblio=17526 >.

Use the following to cite this article: Maiese, Michelle. "Distributive Justice." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: June 2003 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/distributive-justice >.

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Article contents

Global distributive justice.

• Kevin K W Ip Kevin K W Ip Department of Government and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.89
• Published online: 20 November 2017
• This version: 19 July 2023
• Previous version

Distributive justice, in its broadest sense, is about how benefits and burdens ought to be distributed among a set of individuals as a matter of right and entitlement. Political philosophers have traditionally assumed that principles of distributive justice apply only within the bounds of a given political community. However, this assumption has been rigorously challenged in recent years, as evidenced by the recent work on global distributive justice. Students of global distributive justice have paid considerable attention to how certain facts about the global domain might affect the grounds of their normative judgments. Therefore, it is important to focus on the application of distributive justice to certain global issues, including reparations for historic injustice, climate change, transnational trade, and natural resources ownership. These issues are inevitably global in scope, and they tend to have profound impacts on the well-being of individuals around the world.

• distributive justice
• global distributive justice
• global poverty
• global inequality
• global issues
• global equality
• international relations

Updated in this version

Expanded and amended with new scholarship.

Introduction

Humans live in a world of unprecedented affluence, and yet each day, more than a billion people are struggling to meet their most basic needs, such as nutrition, health care, shelter, and clean water. Is this a problem of justice ? Distributive justice, in its broadest sense, is about how benefits and burdens ought to be distributed among a set of individuals as a matter of right and entitlement. Political philosophers have traditionally assumed that principles of distributive justice apply only within the bounds of a given political community. A prominent example of this is perhaps John Rawls’s (1971/1999a) A Theory of Justice . A much-cited quotation from Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice ( 1983 ) reads as follows: “The idea of distributive justice presupposes a bounded world within which distributions take place: a group of people committed to dividing, exchanging and sharing goods, first of all among themselves” (p. 31). However, this assumption—that the scope of distributive justice should be confined to the state—has been rigorously challenged by many other political philosophers in recent years. This article surveys the recent work on global distributive justice. It focuses on a number of debates among contemporary political philosophers in response to current distribution of wealth and resources in the world.

It is not surprising that many have doubted the relevance of global distributive justice or considered it a subject too idealistic to be taken seriously in international politics. A realist, for example, is likely to dismiss any attempt to further global distributive justice as a futile pursuit or view it as a pretext for advancing certain political agenda. Realism is an influential approach in the study of international relations, and it is skeptical about global distributive justice for three reasons. First, realism typically holds a pessimistic account of human nature. Hans J. Morgenthau (1978 , pp. 4–5) famously grounds his theory of international politics on human nature and maintains that political actions are dominated not by any ethical ideal but the pursuit of “interest defined as power.” An influential British realist and diplomat, E. H. Carr (1939 , pp. 63–88), also warns that moral ideals and universal goods have been routinely abused as a mere thin veil for the advancement of national interests. Second, skepticism about global distributive justice can be grounded in its view on the international system. For realism, the international system is “anarchy,” and there is no central agent that can enforce rules of distributive justice ( Waltz, 1959 , 1978 ). Finally, realists are very much aware of the tension between successful political actions and moral ideals. For realists, the task of political leaders in formulating their foreign policies is not to further any abstract moral ideal, such as global distributive justice, but the advancement of the national interest of their state ( Kennan, 1954 ; Morgenthau, 1978 , pp. 10–11). Nonetheless, one must be cautious about the actual implications of these realist theories on global distributive justice. First, these realist theories focus on explaining international affairs. Although some realists like Morgenthau did comment on how a state should conduct their foreign policies, the primary focus of these theories is empirical and explanatory rather than normative or moral. Thus, the realist perspective can at most show the infeasibility or improbability of achieving distributive justice in the global realm, but it does not undermine the moral desirability of such an ideal. Moreover, the realist misgiving about the hypocrisy in international politics, while justified, does not imply that moral ideals are irrelevant in the global context. Instead, it only suggests that people should be more cautious in interpreting the words and deeds of states and other organizations. In short, global distributive justice is a pressing issue in the contemporary world, and no one who takes international affairs seriously can ignore it.

Poverty at Home and Abroad: Are They “My” Poor?

The current situation of global poverty is morally shocking: 1.2 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day. In developing countries (where 92% of the world’s children live), 7 in 100 will not survive beyond the age of 5 years, and 25 in 100 will live in poverty. Nearly 156 million children are stunted as a result of malnutrition and infection ( United Nations Development Programme, 2014 ). The gravity of the problem of global poverty has prompted many moral or political philosophers to think that the current distribution of resources, which has left so many lives in peril, is seriously unjust. However, they disagree strongly about the moral relevance of political boundaries to people’s duties and entitlements. One of the key debates in global distributive justice is the debate between cosmopolitans, who reject the moral relevance of political boundaries, and particularistic theorists, who take seriously the moral implications of group memberships and special ties.

Cosmopolitanism

In his landmark essay, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Peter Singer (1972 , p. 231; 2009 , p. 3) invites readers to consider a hypothetical situation in which one is walking past a shallow pond and sees a child drowning in it when no one else is around. Most people would conclude that in this situation, one has an obligation to wade in the pond and pull the child out, even if it means getting one’s clothes muddy or being late for work. Singer then seeks to apply this intuition to the case of global poverty and argues that physical proximity and distance make no moral difference. He further argues that there is no impartial justification for giving preference to the interests of one’s fellow countrymen when one can prevent great sufferings of the poor abroad with little cost to oneself ( Singer, 2002 , pp. 167–180). This position on global distributive justice is known as cosmopolitanism . Cosmopolitanism can be traced back to the stoics of ancient Greece, who refused to define themselves in terms of their native city-state. Its central idea is that each individual is a “citizen of the world” whose allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings ( Appiah, 2006 ; Nussbaum, 1996 , pp. 4–7). When determining the scope of distributive justice, cosmopolitanism maintains that principles of distributive justice must be global, not merely domestic.

Thomas Pogge suggests that there are three elements of cosmopolitanism. The first is individualism : The ultimate units of concern are human beings or persons—collectives may be units of indirect concern in virtue of the well-being of their individual members. The second is universality : The status of ultimate unit of concern attaches to every living human being equally without discrimination on the basis of their group membership. In the third, generality , persons are ultimate units of concern for everyone else ( Pogge, 1994 ; 2002 , p. 169; 2007b ).

There are some points to note about cosmopolitanism. First, this form of cosmopolitanism is primarily about obligations and the scope of distributive justice, and it is different from cultural cosmopolitanism, which maintains that one could live a meaningful and flourishing life without identifying oneself with a particular cultural group whose boundaries are reasonably clear ( Scheffler, 1999 ). Second, not all cosmopolitans reject the idea of giving special attention to one’s compatriots over foreigners, but the reason for so doing must be derivative. Martha Nussbaum (1996 , p. 135), in replying to her critics, suggests that sometimes “it is right to give the local an additional measure of concern” not because the local is more important per se but doing so is “the only sensible way to do good.” Robert Goodin (1988) also argues that assigning special duties for particular people, such as one’s fellow countrymen, is justified because it is, in many cases, a more effective way to fulfill general duties that everyone has toward everyone else worldwide.

Ethical Particularism

A number of political philosophers have defended a form of ethical particularism that holds that members of a political society owe to one another some special obligations of justice that they do not owe to nonmembers.

The most prominent form of this ethical particularism is perhaps nationalism. Although contemporary nationalists do not necessarily reject global principles of distributive justice altogether, they contend that one has special obligations of distributive justice to one’s fellow nationals. But what is a nation ? David Miller (1995 , p. 27; 2007 , pp. 124–127), a leading contemporary nationalist, provides the following definition: A nation is a group of people (a) with a common identity, (b) marked off from other communities by its distinct public culture, (c) whose members recognize special obligations to one another, (d) regard the continued existence of the nation as a valuable good, and (e) aspire to be politically self-determining.

There are three distinct arguments supporting the nationalist thesis that one has special obligations of justice to one’s fellow nationals. First, it could be argued that one has special obligations to those with whom one identifies, and this sense of identity clearly applies to nations. Miller (1995 , p. 70), for example, points out that one reason why nationality has ethical significance is that it is a powerful source of personal identity. Yael Tamir (1993 , p. 137), in her book Liberal Nationalism , argues that one’s special obligations to one’s fellow nations are “not grounded on consent, reciprocity, or gratitude, but rather on a feeling of belonging and connectedness.” Jeff McMahan (1997) , on the other hand, argues that one has special obligations of justice toward one’s fellow nationals because members of a system of social cooperation have special obligations of justice to one another (which they do not have to outsiders), and a nation is such a system.

One does not have to be a nationalist in order to defend special obligations of justice within a particular society, however. For Samuel Scheffler (2002a , pp. 79–80; 2002b , pp. 106–107), one cannot value one’s relationship to another person without also seeing it as a source of special obligations unless the relationship in question is degrading or demeaning, or it serves to undermine human flourishing. Thus, to the extent that one has reason to value one’s relationship to one’s fellow citizens, one must accept that there are special obligations among compatriots.

In response to these arguments for ethical particularism, cosmopolitans could have two replies. First, as Simon Caney (1999) points out, these arguments, if properly understood, do not vindicate the particularistic thesis that one has special obligations of justice to one’s compatriots. It is because the fact that (P1) X has a right to A, and (P2) Y has a special obligation to X, does not show that (C) Y has a special obligation to provide X with A. Moreover, it could be argued that special duties that arise from shared group membership are valuable only when they are within the constraints provided by the cosmopolitan theory of global justice ( Abizadeh & Gilabert, 2008 ).

Global Sufficientarianism

Although many people regard alleviating global poverty as a matter of charity or philanthropy, a number of political or moral philosophers have argued that it is unjust that some people suffer from extreme poverty. There are at least four different approaches through which one could defend the claim that individuals living in affluent societies are under an obligation to help eradicate severe poverty abroad.

The Utilitarian Approach

The first is the utilitarian approach. Redistribution of resources from affluent to poor societies, according to the utilitarian view, is mandatory (not merely a matter of charity) because it is the best way to promote utility globally. Singer’s (1972 , p. 231; 2009 , p. 3) drowning child hypothetical is a prime example of this approach. His argument is utilitarian in nature and contains the following premises and conclusion: (P1) Suffering and death from severe impoverishment are bad; (P2) if it is in one’s power to prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing something nearly as important, there is an obligation to do so; (P3) it is in the power of individuals living in affluent societies to prevent suffering and death from severe impoverishment without sacrificing something nearly as important; and therefore, it is wrong for them not to do so ( Singer, 1972 ; 2009 , pp. 15–16). Drawing on a different set of hypothetical examples, Peter Unger (1996) defends a similar claim that individuals in the affluent world should make significant contributions to the effort of reducing global poverty to a point that they just remain “modestly well-off” and this, in effect, requires them to contribute funds to foreign aid up to the point where giving more would be unproductive.

Nonetheless, this utilitarian approach to global justice has been widely criticized for being overly demanding on individuals, and there should be some limits on the demand to produce best outcomes. It may be argued, for instance, that individuals could permissibly give proportionally greater weight to their own interests, projects, or pursuits rather than promoting well-being in a completely impartial way ( Scheffler, 1982 , 2010 ). An alternative view suggests that it is unreasonable to require individuals to contribute more than their fair share to the effort of ending global poverty when others are not complying with their respective obligations ( Murphy, 1993 , 2000 ; Ridge, 2010 ).

The Right-Based Approach

The second is the right-based approach. Many political philosophers argue that there is a human right to freedom from poverty. In fact, Article 25 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”

There are indeed different ways to account for the normative significance of the human right to subsistence that make this right universally applicable:

Human interests : Charles Jones (1999) defends a human right to subsistence because it protects important human interests, such as having a normal life span and health.

Autonomy : A right to subsistence is important because it is necessary for individuals to exercise their autonomy. David Copp (1992 ; 1998 ; 2005 , pp. 41–47), for example, argues that people everywhere should be enabled to meet their basic needs, and it is the global society’s duty to secure such needs because they are requirements for autonomous agency and all autonomous agents are equally deserving of respect. James Griffin (2008 , pp. 176–190) also affirms that there is a human right to at least a minimum level of welfare because it protects a person’s normative agency—the capacity to autonomously choose and pursue one’s conception of a worthwhile life.

Subsistence rights as basic rights : A right to subsistence is important because it is necessary for the enjoyment of other important rights. Henry Shue (1996 , p. 23) argues that there is a basic right to subsistence, which includes “unpolluted air, unpolluted water, adequate food, adequate clothing, adequate shelter, and minimal preventive public health.” By “basic rights,” he means the special class of rights, the enjoyment of which is essential for the enjoyment of all other rights. Thus, if one accepts that everyone has a right to something, then one must also accept that everyone has subsistence rights, the absence of which makes the enjoyment of other rights impossible or severely disrupted ( Shue, 1996 , pp. 30–31).

Capabilities : A right to subsistence is important because it preserves important human capabilities—a person’s real capacity to do what the person has reason to value. Amartya Sen (1981 , 2009 ) and Nussbaum (2000 , 2006 , 2011 ) maintain that all people have core entitlements in virtue of their humanity, and these entitlements include being free from severe capabilities deprivation.

Institutional harm : It is important to talk about people free from severe capabilities deprivation.ilities—a person’snd systematically violated. Pogge (2002 , 2007a , 2010 ), in a series of articles and books, argues not only that there is a human right to subsistence but also that it is being systematically violated. Article 28 of the UDHR states that “everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration can be fully realized.” But Pogge (2002 , pp. 113–116) mentions two features of the global order that harm the poor: the international resources privilege, in which any group holding governmental power in a country is considered the rightful owner of the country’s natural resources—this creates great incentives for civil wars and consolidates oppressive regimes; and (b) the international borrowing privilege, in which any group holding governmental power in a country can borrow funds in the name of the country and any successor government is duty-bound to honor the debt. This worsens the problem of corruption in many poor countries and imposes huge financial burdens on the poor. Thus, failure to eradicate global justice is a failure to perform the negative duty not to harm the global poor. To address global poverty, Pogge (2002 , pp. 204–207) proposes a global resources dividend, which requires countries to share a small value of their natural resource when they decide to use or sell it. Pogge’s arguments are novel because most people have seen their duties to the foreign poor, if any, as some form of duties of assistance, but Pogge clearly argues that they should be viewed as negative duties, which are more stringent in the eyes of most people. However, the success of Pogge most people have seen their duties to the foreign poor, if any, as some form of dut order is in fact harming the poor. Against this, Mathias Risse (2005) argues that because the industrialized nations have in fact improved the living standings of the people in the developing countries, the global institutional order is not actively harming the poor.

Note that there have been some misgivings about the right-based approach to condemn global poverty. One serious objection to this approach comes from Onora O’Neill (1996 , pp. 128–153; 2001 , pp. 124–127), who argues that this approach is misguided because it cannot provide an adequate account of which agents should bear the obligations to fulfill those rights and it tends to overlook obligations without counterpart rights. Raymond Geuss (2001 , p. 143) also questions the enforceability of subsistence rights and maintains that a set of rights cannot exist without “some specifiable and more or less effective mechanism for enforcing them.”

The Contractarian Approach

The third approach is the contractarian approach. This approach is built around the concept of consent : Any social arrangement or practice cannot be just unless individuals subject to it would have reason to consent to it, in a suitably defined choosing situation.

John Rawls’s (1999b) The Law of Peoples is a prominent example of this contractarian view. Rawls is one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century . His Theory of Justice ( 1971 /1999a) provides a robust defense of liberal democracy and redistributive taxation. But Rawls is reluctant to extrapolate his domestic theory to the global domain. The first thing to note about Rawls’s theory of global justice, which is remarkably different from his domestic theory, is his focus on people rather than individuals as the agents of justice in the global arena. The aim of The Law of Peoples is to defend “a particular political conception of right and justice that applies to the principles and norms of international law and practice” ( Rawls, 1999b , p. 3). The term people (as distinct from states) is meant to highlight the moral characters of societies as collective agents that are not solely motivated by prudence or rationality ( Rawls, 1999b , pp. 23–27). One principle in The Law of Peoples is the principle that “people have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime” ( Rawls, 1999b , pp. 37, 105–113). Those who are familiar with Rawls’s work will also be familiar with the idea of the original position in which the contracting parties who are subject to a veil of ignorance determine principles of justice for a liberal democratic society. In The Law of Peoples , Rawls invokes a second original position to determine the principles of global justice. In the second original position, parties are representatives of liberal peoples (whereas in the domestic case, parties are representing individual citizens) subject to a veil of ignorance—not knowing the size of the territories, the population, the relative strength, the extent of natural resources, or the level of economic development of the peoples they represent. What seems to have motivated Rawls’s shift to a more minimalist theory of global justice is his own concern about the legitimacy of the international order, so he wants to ensure that even nonliberal (but reasonable) peoples would have reason to accept the law of peoples. For Rawls (1999b , pp. 119–120), the reason for providing aid to poor societies is to enable them to develop a reasonably just or decent political system, and he is indifferent to any remaining inequality once this aim has been achieved. That is, in his global theory, Rawls (1999b , pp. 32–33) aims at the equality of peoples instead of persons .

Gillian Brock (2009 , pp. 63–72) follows the Rawlsian contractarian approach and defends a need-based minimal floor principle of global justice that guarantees every individual is adequately positioned to enjoy the prospects of a decent life. Drawing on the empirical research by Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer, Brock argues that the contracting parties would actually favor some minimal floor principle. Frohlich and Oppenheimer have designed experiments to find out people’s actual judgments about fairness under the condition of impartiality in which the majority of participants would choose the principle that guarantees an income floor to the worst-off individual ( Brock, 2009 , pp. 54–57; Frohlich & Oppenheimer, 1992 ). Therefore, Brock (2009 , p. 52) argues that a “minimal package” that includes what is necessary for people to meet the basic needs of themselves and their dependents would be reasonable to agree to in the ideal choosing situation.

Finally, Nicole Hassoun (2012) advances a legitimacy argument (or autonomy argument) for global distributive justice. Her argument proceeds as follows: (P1) Coercive institutions must be legitimate; (P2) for a coercive institution to be legitimate, it must provide its subjects with sufficient autonomy to consent to, or dissent from, its rules; (P3) to have sufficient autonomy, one must have enough food, water, shelter, education, health care, social support, and emotional goods; and (P4) there are many coercive international institutions. Therefore, (C1) to the extent that the global poor cannot autonomously consent to the existing international institutions, they are illegitimate; and (C2) these institutions should ensure that their subjects have enough food, water, and other goods necessary for sufficient autonomy. This argument has resonance with the contractarian approach because it identifies the conditions under which individuals could consent to coercive institutions and by so doing lends support to an account of global distributive justice.

Subordination of the Poor

The fourth approach focuses on the morally problematic power relations associated with severe poverty. On the one hand, severe poverty causes subordination of the poor to the relatively wealthy. On the other hand, poverty is in fact the result of relations of subordination that are exploitative. For example, Richard Miller (2010 , p. 210), who believes the goal of global justice is “provision of basic needs with respect for autonomy,” maintains that American citizens should share a greater responsibility for helping the global poor because of the imperialist behavior of the United States (pp. 147–180). Another example of this approach is Cecile Laborde (2010) . Applying the republican ideal of nondomination to the global context, Laborde argues that the global poor should be protected from the systemic domination that jeopardizes their ability to secure basic needs for themselves.

Global Prioritarianism

As mentioned in the section on “ The Contractarian Approach ,” Rawls is reluctant to extend his domestic theory of justice to the global context. His own account of global justice, however, has been criticized for underplaying the significance of the existing interactions and institutional practices in the global domain. In addition, there is a question whether Rawls’s two theories—one for domestic justice and the other for global justice—actually fit together ( Buchanan, 2000 ). As part of his domestic theory of justice, Rawls argues for the difference principle as one of the principles regulating social and economic inequalities in a given society. It states that social and economic inequalities are acceptation only if they are “to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society” ( 1971 , pp. 75–83; 1999b, pp. 65–73; 2001 , pp. 42–43). Although Rawls himself considers the difference principle to be an egalitarian principle of justice, other theorists such as Derek Parfit (2002) argue that it should be classified as a “prioritarian” principle since the difference principle “gives absolute priority to benefiting those who are worse off” and requires the worse-off group to be as well-off as possible (pp. 116–121). Therefore, the advocates of a global difference principle can be seen as advocating a prioritarian view on global distributive justice, which separates their views from other egalitarian arguments.

In the field of global distributive justice, there have been debates about the proper scope of this principle. Charles Beitz (1979) and Pogge (1989) argue that transnational social and economic interdependence is sufficiently complex to constitute a scheme of social cooperation, and therefore one should apply the Rawlsian original position to the global context to determine the suitable principles regulating that scheme. They conclude that the difference principle, which maximizes the life prospect of the least well-off individuals, should be applied globally. Note, however, that Beitz (1983) adopts a more nonrelational account of global distributive justice and maintains that individuals should be included in the global original position simply in virtue of their moral personality.

Global Egalitarianism

The previous sections mainly deal with sufficientarian accounts of global distributive justice—that is, no one should suffer from absolute deprivation. But there is also an issue of whether people’s relative shares should also be a concern in global distributive justice. Although egalitarianism does not deny the moral significance of avoiding sufficiency shortfalls, it firmly rejects the view that, above a certain basic minimum, inequalities in individuals’ life prospects simply become morally irrelevant ( Casal, 2007 ). Egalitarianism, therefore, is committed to reducing relative deprivation of some even when no one suffers from absolute deprivation ( Blake, 2001 ). The debate about whether justice requires equality or mere sufficiency has long been an important topic in the contemporary studies of distributive justice. (For some discussions, see Casal, 2007 ; Cavanagh, 2002 ; Frankfurt, 1987 ; Kekes, 2003 ; Raz, 1986 , pp. 217–244; Weston, 1982 ). A notable exception is Nagel (2005 , p. 118), who holds that justice must, by definition, be concerned with relative shares of resources enjoyed by individuals, and he regards sufficiency as a demand of humanity, not justice.

It may be objected that equality as such is irrelevant to justice because whatever good reasons we might have to be moved by egalitarianism actually appeal to some fundamental values distinct from equality itself ( Miller, 1982 ; 2007 , pp. 51–52). But this objection rests on the mistake that egalitarians must somehow think that equality is intrinsically valuable. It seems rather dogmatic to insist that any genuinely egalitarian doctrine must appeal to nothing but equality itself. particularly if “equality” is understood as an abstract distributive pattern that commands our allegiance apart from all other values. For instance, many egalitarians argue that inequality is objectionable because it is unfair if someone is worse off than others through no fault or choice of one’s own, or it is unfair that equally deserving people are unequally well-off. Although these arguments involve an understanding of fairness, it is rather unclear why they cannot be regarded as egalitarian doctrines. Moreover, it is perfectly legitimate for an egalitarian to argue that social and economic inequalities should be reduced because such inequalities may give rise to objectionable forms of domination by some over others. The underlying idea is that preventing domination is itself an egalitarian reason for favoring social and economic equality as it forms part of the background conditions under which people can live with one another as equals, and it goes beyond attending to basic needs ( O’Neill, 2008 ).

Arguments for Global Equality

A number of arguments have been made in favor of global equality. One strand of these arguments can be called nonrelational arguments because they try to defend an egalitarian account of global justice by appealing to what individuals are owed in virtue of their moral status as human beings independent of their respective institutional membership. First, the moral conviction underlying luck egalitarianism could be invoked to justify some form of “equality of fortune” or “responsibility-sensitive” egalitarianism: That inequalities of advantage deriving from unchosen circumstances are unjust seems to apply across political boundaries. After all, just like one’s family background or native endowments, citizenship acquired by birth is simply another aspect of people’s circumstances, which, according to this view, should not be allowed to influence people’s relative positions. For example, Cecile Fabre (2003 , 2005 ) argues that residence in a particular country could be considered an involuntary disadvantage for which people should be compensated. One way to implement this luck egalitarian principle is to regard birthright citizenship of affluent, stable countries as a special kind of inherited property, the transfer of which can be taxed for global distributive purposes ( Shachar, 2009 ). Simon Caney (2001 ; 2005 , pp. 122–123) also defends this position by arguing that the internal logic of the justification of fair equality of opportunity in the “domestic” case—that it is unfair for a person to have worse opportunities because of his cultural identity—entails that the scope of this principle of justice should be global. Second, one may insist that equality is a morally privileged benchmark in thinking about global justice. Brian Barry (1998) , for example, applies the Scanlonian test to the global case and contends that all transnational inequalities of rights, opportunities, and resources have to be justifiable in ways that cannot be reasonably rejected by those who get the least. Pablo Gilabert (2012) , for another example, maintains that a commitment to the moral equality of persons and cosmopolitan justifiability could give rise to some egalitarian principles of global justice without appealing to any associative grounds.

These nonrelational arguments clearly seem plausible to some, but others would argue that they ignore the nature and the extent of transnational interactions that might have some bearings on distributive justice. In contrast to these nonrelational arguments is the relational perspective on global justice, according to which the demands of equality apply only to individuals who stand in some morally relevant relationship with one another. The current level of global economic interdependence has often been invoked to justify applying certain egalitarian principles of justice to the global context. Darrel Moellendorf (2009) , for example, argues that an egalitarian account of global distributive justice can be grounded in the inherent dignity of individuals in conjunction with their membership in global institutions because the respect for human dignity requires a justification of institutional principles that can be reasonably accepted by those who are unavoidably subject to their rules. In particular, he contends that the principle of equality of opportunity should be applied globally because justificatory respect rules out any principle of distribution that permits persons to be privileged merely because of their citizenship or nationality at birth. Kok-Chor Tan also defends a global version of luck egalitarianism, but he appeals not only to the moral arbitrariness of citizenship but also to the fact that the global institutional order turns some natural facts about the world into advantages and disadvantages for people. As such, for Tan (2011) , the scope of luck-egalitarian justice would not be global without people’s sharing a global institutional order with one another. Pogge (2007c) and Lea Ypi (2012 , pp. 112–127) independently argue for a form of global instrumental egalitarianism that draws on the causal link between absolute deprivation and relative deprivation. Ypi focuses in particular on the unequal distribution of state power in the international arena and argues that such inequality causes absolute deprivation on the part of the global poor. As such, if one is concerned about global poverty, one cannot leave such inequality of state power unchallenged. Finally, some political theorists defend different versions of global relational egalitarianism. They hold that relational equality—standing in relations of equality to one another (rather than relations characterized by domination or exploitation)—is a requirement of global justice. According to this view, global inequality is unjust to the extent that it gives rise to or reflects morally problematic forms of relations in which people stand to one another ( Altman & Wellman, 2009 ; Ip, 2016 ; Nath, 2011 ).

Critiques of Global Equality

The ideal of global equality has been subjected to powerful critiques from different theoretical perspectives. Each of these challenges points out some disanalogy between the domestic and the global contexts that their claim justifies restricting the scope of egalitarian justice to the former. They all share the following structure: (a) Concerns for equality are appropriate within a particular context only when certain property is present; (b) the property is present in the context of a domestic society (e.g., a state or a nation) but not in the global realm; and therefore, (c) egalitarian principles of distributive justice should be adopted within the state but not at the global level ( Caney, 2008 ). There are at least three distinct challenges to global egalitarianism:

The argument from coercion maintains that equality is a demand of justice only among those who are subject to the same sovereign authority that coerces them to abide by its rules. Thus, what grounds the relevance of egalitarian principles of justice is the fact of political coercion . Michael Blake (2001) maintains that political coercion is a sine qua non of egalitarian justice because the autonomy-restricting character of the state requires a special justification that gives rise to egalitarian claims. Nagel (2005) states that putative joint authorship of a coercively imposed legal system of the state generates concerns for equality. In response, opponents have pointed out that coercion does exist in the global context. Obvious examples include border control and the international property rights treaties ( Abizadeh, 2007 ; Cavallero, 2006 , 2010 ). Therefore, the coercion theorists have to offer some account of how political coercion exercised by the state against its members differs from other forms of coercion that could be found in the global context. Risse (2006) , for example, holds that what matters to egalitarianism is not coercion as such but coercion that meets the requirements of “political and legal immediacy” which distinguishes coercion exercised by the state from other forms of coercion, say, exercised by supra-state institutions. In his more recent works, Blake (2011 ; cf. 2013 , pp. 97–107) distinguishes between two forms of coercion: vertical coercion, in which all agents are subject equally to a central authority, and horizontal coercion, in which some powerful agents coerce weaker agents. Blake argues that international coercion is horizontal in nature and egalitarian rights are not appropriate justification for this coercion.

The argument from cooperation contends that egalitarian principles of distributive justice should be applied within certain schemes of social cooperation. From this view, global egalitarianism is indefensible because the relevant kind of social cooperation (still) does not exist at the global level. This view has been defended by Samuel Freeman and Andrea Sangiovanni. Defending a Rawlsian view on distributive justice, Freeman (2007 , pp. 304–308) argues that the problem of distributive justice is a question of political design of basic social institutions; and because, in the absence of a world state, there can be no global basic institutions on a par to the basic institutions of a society, principles of distributive justice do not apply at the global level. Sangiovanni (2007) argues that equality is a requirement of reciprocity in the mutual provision of a central class of collective goods necessary for preserving individual autonomy, and because only states provide these collective goods, we owe a special duty of egalitarian reciprocity only to our fellow citizens and residents who do their part in sustaining the state’s capacity to provide these collective goods.

Alternatively, one may argue that substantive principles of equality can apply only within the context of a national community. This kind of objection to global equality, unlike the previous two which focus on the state, holds that nations are the privileged context within which egalitarian principles of justice apply. According to this view, global egalitarianism is misguided because it overlooks the moral relevance of nationality in determining people’s responsibilities and entitlements. David Miller’s (1995 , 1998 , 2000 , 2007 ) contributions to the debate of global distributive justice are perhaps the best examples of this form of argument. In his book National Responsibility and Global Justice , Miller (2007) argues that a shared national culture is essential for identifying the appropriate metric for egalitarian principles of justice to work. Besides, the fact that people belong to different self-determining nations poses a serious threat to global egalitarianism because individuals can be held responsible for the collective decisions and preferences of their nations.

Applications of Global Distributive Justice

Even in more abstract theoretical discussions, researchers in the field of global distributive justice have paid considerable attention to how certain facts about the global domain might affect the grounds of their normative judgments. So it should come as no surprise that they have tried to apply normative theories to concrete issues. The next discussion focuses on five of these issues: immigration, reparations for historic injustice, climate change, transnational trade, and natural resources ownership. These issues share two things in common: (a) They are inevitably global in scope and cannot be confined to any single society, and (b) these issues potentially give rise to different distributions of burdens and benefits among individuals from around the world.

Immigration

Under the existing international order, a person’s access to social and economic advantages is largely determined by their place of residence, and transnational movement of persons is heavily regulated by states. Branko Milanovic (2016 , pp. 118–139) estimates that 80% of global inequality depends on a person’s place of residence and only 20% on a person’s social class. In the literature, many theorists have discussed the morality of immigration restrictions from the perspective of global distributive justice. Joseph Carens, for example, famously compared citizenship in a wealthy democratic state with feudal birthright privilege which was an inherited status that greatly enhanced one’s life chances ( Carens, 1987 , p. 252; 2013 ). Advocates for a more liberal migration regime often justify international mobility rights by appealing to some ideal standards of global distributive justice explored in this article, such as global equality of opportunity ( Carens, 1987 , 2013 ; Cole, 2011 ; Kukathas, 2005 ), priority to the global disadvantaged ( Higgins, 2013 ), or the principle of sufficiency ( Blunt, 2020 , pp. 107–112). The defendants of the state’s right to exclude foreigners, on the other hand, appeal to other values, such as preservation of national culture ( Miller, 2005 , 2016 ), freedom of association ( Wellman, 2008 ), or the existing members’ ownership rights over their domestic institutions ( Pevnick, 2011 ), but they are not necessarily against the idea of global distributive justice.

Many debates over the ethics of immigration have focused on whether borders should ideally be open to potential migrants. In reality, however, global migration today is highly selective and stratified. States often grant privileged admissions to potential migrants who can bring productive labor, marketable talent, knowledge, and innovation to their host society. Nonetheless, there are reasons for thinking that the practice of economic selection can be unjust. First, economic selection in immigration can result in harmful brain drain as the affluent states tend to select those who are young and highly skilled workers from developing countries. David Miller (2016 , pp. 108–111) argues that affluent states act wrongly if they actively seek to recruit skilled migrants from poor countries and that sometimes states ought to refuse admission to certain migrants whose skills are in short supply in the sending countries, if they are struggling to meet the basic needs of their members (for an opposing view, see Oberman, 2013 ). Second, selecting immigrants according to their economic potentials will, according to Shachar (2016 , pp. 196–197), pose serious hazards to democratic and egalitarian notions of citizenship. Finally, given the degree of background global injustices and how such injustices explain the current flow of migration, there is a serious question of whether affluent states should be allowed to select immigrants in ways that are likely to reinforce or even exasperate existing global injustice ( Ip, 2020 ).

Historic Injustice

There is no denying that the world is full of historic injustice—slavery, aggression, resources exploitation, and colonialism, to name but a few. Political philosophers are interested in whether a group of people who have suffered from past injustice is entitled to compensation.

Some scholars are skeptical about rectifying historic injustice. Sometimes they appeal to the difficulties in identifying the relevant counterfactual to determine the amount of harm suffered by the victims. George Sher (1980) , for example, argues that with the passage of time, the difference between the victim’s well-being in the actual world and their well-being in the alternative world (where the initial wrong did not take place) may actually be the effect of the actions of many other intervening agents and not the effect of the initial wrong itself. Thus, there will be little or nothing left to be compensated for. Alternatively, as Jeremy Waldron (1992) argues, historic entitlements are weakened by the fact of historic persistence of dispossession because the relation between the original owner and the resource taken is weakened by the passage of time. Also, the change of social and economic circumstances from the time of original acquisition might mean that historic injustice should be superseded in order to prevent present and prospective deprivation ( Waldron, 1992 , pp. 7–14, 20–26).

Against such skepticism, some theorists argue there are indeed duties of rectification for historic injustice. In Rectifying International Injustice , Daniel Butt (2009) contends that the present generations can be linked to past wrongdoing, in a morally relevant way, through benefit, entitlement, or responsibility, and he concludes that “those living in the developed world possess significant rectificatory duties to many of those in less developed countries” (p. 17). Examining the moral implications of colonialism, Ypi et al., (2009) argue that individuals linked by ex-colonial relations of their societies owe one another duties of “robust distributive justice” because colonial rule constitutes a political association that involves special duties of distributive justice. Jenna Thompson (2018) , for example, argues that people can acquire intergenerational responsibilities and entitlements with regard to historic injustice on the grounds of restitution, unjust enrichment, and continuing harm.

Climate Change

Climate change is arguably one of the most dangerous challenges facing humanity. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that the earth’s climate is changing and such changes are human-induced ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014 , pp. 125–129). It is not difficult to see why climate change is an issue of global distributive justice. To begin with, the problem of climate change is global in scope and its solution clearly requires transnational cooperation. Also, climate change involves a distribution of burdens—extreme weather conditions, rising sea level, spread of diseases, and mitigation costs—and benefits, such as consumption and carbon emissions rights.

A number of issues in climate justice deserve particular attention. The first issue is whether and how climate change is a human rights problem. It has been widely argued that climate change undermines a broad range of human rights. Among these are the rights to subsistence and a safe environment, and the global poor are most vulnerable (see, e.g., Caney, 2009 ; Humphreys, 2010 ; Nickel, 1993 ; Shue, 1993 , 2011 ). In addition, climate change potentially endangers the rights of the future generations ( Gardiner, 2011 , pp. 143–184). Another issue concerns the distribution of emissions rights. Taking the atmosphere to be a “global sink” that absorbs greenhouse gases, Singer (2002 , pp. 35–36) argues that everyone is entitled to an equal share of this sink and thus each person should have equal emissions rights. Steve Vanderheiden (2008) also qualified an egalitarian view and argues that after basic needs have been met, the remaining emissions rights should be distributed equally. However, some have disputed this egalitarian view and argued that the distribution of emission rights should be more sensitive to the fulfillment of people’s basic needs and developmental rights ( Caney, 2011 , 2012 ; Moellendorf, 2011 ; 2014 , pp. 123–151, 236–239). Finally, there is an issue regarding how to distribute the burdens associated with climate change mitigation ( Cripps, 2013 , 2017 ). Few would dispute that affluent countries and individuals should bear more of a burden in mitigating the harmful effects of climate change. It is either because these countries and individuals are better able to do so, bearing extra burdens will be less costly to them, or because of their past emissions, which led to the current problem ( Brown, 2013 ; Harris, 2010 , pp. 121–155; Miller, 2010 , pp. 84–117; Risse, 2012 , pp. 199–200; Shue, 1999 ).

Transnational Trade

Trade occupies a vital role in the world’s economy, and the demand for “fair trade” has become a global civic movement. However, trade prompts important moral questions, including questions of justice: What terms of trade can be considered fair to the parties involved? How should benefits from trade be distributed? Some economists defend the claim that trade liberalization policies or free trade has in general helped raise living standards of the global poor (see, e.g., Bhagwati, 2007 ; Irwin, 2009 ; Wolf, 2005 ). Other researchers feel more ambivalent about the impacts of trade and contend that with appropriate institutions, trade generally benefits the poor and international trade rules should be designed to reduce poverty and promote development ( Stiglitz, 2006 ; Stiglitz & Charlton, 2006 ; Tesón & Klick, 2012 ).

Some political philosophers, however, would argue that transnational trade gives rise to distinct fairness issues concerning how the burdens and benefits arising from trade should be distributed among participants. Most, if not all, political theorists researching the normative aspects of transnational trade would argue that the current arrangement of transnational trade, including the World Trade Organization regime and other bilateral trade agreements, is far from just. For example, Aaron James (2012a , 2012b ) argues that for the terms of trade to be fair, trading nations must protect people from the harms of trade (collective due care), and the gains of trade ought to be distributed equally unless unequal gains flow to poor countries (international relative gains). James Christensen (2017) argues that trade must be restricted in order to protect people from serious harms, whereas the benefits deriving from trade should be distributed in a globally egalitarian fashion. Starting with an understanding of the nature of trade itself, Frank Garcia (2013 , 2019 ) argues that trade cannot be fair unless it can be reasonably regarded as a consensual exchange of economic values. Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner (2019) argue that trade justice is about preventing various types of exploitation in trade, which is broadly understood to be power-induced failures of reciprocity. A related question is whether it is morally permissible for liberal democracies (or their corporations) to trade with autocratic regimes. One possible response to this moral problem is for liberal democracies to disengage entirely from trade with autocratic regimes in order to preserve their moral integrity ( Nili, 2019 ). However, disengagement may either be infeasible or is likely to cause significant harm to the poor living in these regimes ( Armstrong, 2020 ). Perhaps a more nuanced response is more promising, such as requiring liberal democracies to adopt a set of trade policies that could reasonably be expected to improve the human rights conditions of their trading partners ( Ip, 2022 ).

Natural Resources Ownership

Many factors affect the economic development of a particular society; natural resources endowment is clearly one of them. One cannot have a complete theory of global distributive justice without addressing the question of who should own what resources, and this question has received more attention in the recent literature of global distributive justice.

Many theorists have sought to defend the right to own natural resources held by people living in a particular territory in which these resources are located. The nationalist account maintains that national communities can come to have a right to a territory (with the natural resources in it) because they have transformed the territory ( Meisels, 2003 ) and thereby established an internal relation between the territory and its culture ( Miller, 2007 , pp. 217–218; 2012 ). The Lockean account maintains that people gain such ownership of territories and natural resources through adding material value to the territory or resource they occupy ( Nine, 2008 ; 2012 , pp. 72–93; Simmons, 2001 ). The Kantian account holds that a state can have rights to a territory if that state imposes a system of property law that meets the basic conditions of legitimacy, such as protection of minimal freedom, equality, and independence for each citizen ( Stilz, 2009 , 2011 ). The commitment to people’s ownership of natural resources has implications for international trade on natural resources. If the people, not the tyrannical governments that happen to rule them, are the rightful owners of natural resources, then importing oil from many countries will be just like buying stolen properties. It is clear that the governments of these countries, controlled by a small group of corrupt elites, will simply capture the revenue from this trade while the living standard of the common people will not be improved ( Wenar, 2008 , 2016 ).

Not all theorists, however, believe in ownership of natural resources by particular individuals or groups. Other theorists argue that individuals have essentially the same entitlement to the natural resources of the earth regardless of their respective citizenship or nationality. Some of these accounts, such as Beitz (1979) , Hillel Steiner (1999 , 2005 ), and Tim Haywood (2006) , have explicit egalitarian implications and call attention to the moral arbitrariness of the distribution of natural resources. Other accounts, such as Risse (2012) , are sufficientarian and hold that people are entitled to resources that would allow them to meet their basic needs.

Beyond the cosmopolitan/statist debate just stated here, some theorists try to develop alternative accounts of the natural resources right, which gives states some partial rights to own natural resources of their territory. Criticizing Haywood’s (2006) account of natural resources, Avery Kolers (2012) argues that what counts as a resource should be decided by whoever has a morally legitimate territorial right to that place and those goods, which are not treated as means for economic exchange and should not be subject for redistribution. Margaret Moore (2012 , 2014 , 2015 ), as another example, allows states to have control over the natural resources that they need to maintain collective self-determination. Chris Armstrong (2013 , 2014 , 2017 ) also develops a broadly egalitarian account of natural resources ownership by arguing that individuals are entitled to a share of natural resources benefits that would satisfy their basic needs, whereas the surplus of such benefits should be distributed to further egalitarian ends.

Global distributive justice is without doubt an area of increasing academic interest. There have been a series of debates about how to organize shared transnational institutions in accordance with the demands of distributive justice and also about what these demands are. Some theorists insist on a statist or nationalistic approach to these issues, whereas others embrace a more cosmopolitan outlook. Also, as the section on “ Applications of Global Distributive Justice ” indicates, these debates are not merely of theoretical interest but also have practical implications.

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The Best Principle in Distributive Justice Essay

According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (2003), distributive justice is “the principle or set of principles explaining what justice requires when some good (or bad) is distributed amongst persons”. In this case, distributive justice has a “general requirement”, which is suum cuique or to each his or her due. However, this does not completely explain how the “dues” should be determined for each person. Common bases for this calculation are needs, rights or entitlement, and desert. Hence what is due to a person would depend, respectively, on level of neediness (Reeve, 2003). Moreover, Chryssides and Kaler (1996) relate that distributive justice deals with showing that “there is no necessary connection with wrong-doing. It concerns the way in which benefits and burdens are to be shared out among people. Its aim is the morally correct division of things such as wealth, power, property, obligations” (p. 47)

One type of principle in distributive justice is the difference principle. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007) deemed that what inspired the difference principle is the concept of economic wealth “is not a fixed amount from one period to the next”. Since, one person can produce more wealth, there should be a system where the people who are “more productive earn greater incomes”. In this case, Rawls (1993) argues that people would rationally choose and agree on the following two principles of justice. The first principle is the priority of liberty: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. The second principle is the difference principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Individuals who support other distributive justice principle choose the principles that provide the fundamental foundation of the political, economic, and social structure, and they agree on these unanimously. Rawls considers that the principle of people’s choice, as the most general idea, should reflect the view that “all social primary goods—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least favored” (the generalized difference principle). Further measuring of and allocating priorities among primary social goods leads him from this general view to the above two principles.

The first principle implies that fundamental human rights and liberty (the first of his list of primary social goods) must be given higher priority than the other economic and (social) status goods, provided the material welfare of the whole society exceeds the minimum level required. Rawls represents the priorities among primary social goods in the form of “lexical order”. That is, people consider it most important to retain political liberty and refuse to regard it as a freedom that may be traded off against economic and social benefits. Consequently, a social system will never be adopted if it contravenes political rights, however economically efficient that system may be.

The second principle deals with the distribution of economic and social-status goods, that is, what sort of offices and positions people may occupy, what powers and responsibilities they may exercise, and what income and wealth they may obtain. The second part of the second principle (b) requires the guarantee of “fair equality of opportunity”. In order to correct any remaining inequality, the first part of this principle (a) provides for consideration of the share of unfortunate people. In this case, the equality of opportunity requires that social institution should provide a guarantee of no difference in expectation of life, especially in terms of job opportunities, for people with the same ability. Such differences among people should not be brought about by social contingencies such as gender, race, parents’ social and economic position, or other differences in family circumstances. Preventing certain groups of people from taking some jobs means not only that they are excluded from certain economic rewards and social functions associated with the jobs, but also that they are debarred from “experiencing the realization of selves which comes from a skillful and devoted exercise of social duties”. Thus, Rawls always considers the distribution of jobs as primary goods together with its psychological implication—self-respect.

It is believed that the Difference Principle is the best principle of distributive justice because it is deemed that the most important effect of self-respect in social life is that it generates in one’s mind the sense of recognizing another person’s value and appreciating that person’s deeds. That is, the sense of self-respect creates in one’s mind a capacity for respecting other people. Each person’s self-respect brings about a reciprocal relationship in society. This is where Rawls finds the moment of emerging social empathy and cooperation. It was Rawls’ theory that originally demanded the construction of this assumption in order clearly to institute the situation of interpersonal confrontation in which the criteria for justice are required. More positively indeed, he could have insisted that true empathy among people is made possible only when all individuals have a sense of self-respect. With a little exaggeration, we may say that it is the choice of the egalitarian social institutions that generates the social empathy. The greatest significance of Rawls’ theory lies in the fact that it prompts us fundamentally to re-examine the problem of justice through its novel viewpoints and logic.

Chryssides, G. & Kaler, J.(1996). Essentials of Business Ethics . London : McGraw-Hill.

Distributive Justice. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , 2007. Web.

Rawls, J. (1993). Political Liberalism , New York: Columbia University Press.

Reeve, A. (2003). Distributive Justice. In Mclean I. & Mcmillan, A. (eds.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Distributive justice debates in political and social thought: Perspectives on finding a fair share

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Who has what and why in our societies is a pressing issue that has prompted explanation and exposition by philosophers, politicians and jurists for as long as societies and intellectuals have existed. It is a primary issue for a society to tackle this and these answers have been diverse. This collection of essays approaches some of these questions and answers to shed light on neglected approaches to issues of distribution and how these issues have been dealt with historically, socially, conceptually, and practically. The volume moves away from the more dominating and traditionally cast understandings of distributive justice and shows novel and unique ways to approach distributive issues and how these can help enlighten our course of action and thought today by creating new pathways of understanding. The editors and contributors challenge readers by exploring the role and importance of restorative justice within distributive justice, exploring the long shadow of practices of trusteeship, and concepts of social and individual rights and obligations in welfare and economic systems, social protection/provision schemes, egalitarian practices and post-colonial African political thought. Distributive Justice Debates in Political and Social Thought empowers the reader to cast a more critical and historically complete light on the idea of a fair share and the implications it has on societies and the individuals who comprise them.

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• General Arts and Humanities

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• Social Thought Arts & Humanities 100%
• Distributive Justice Arts & Humanities 98%
• distributive justice Social Sciences 98%
• Political Thought Arts & Humanities 80%
• society Social Sciences 57%
• jurist Social Sciences 35%
• individual right Social Sciences 32%
• Social Protection Arts & Humanities 32%

T1 - Distributive justice debates in political and social thought

T2 - Perspectives on finding a fair share

AU - Boisen, Camilla

AU - Murray, Matthew C.

PY - 2016/1/1

Y1 - 2016/1/1

N2 - Who has what and why in our societies is a pressing issue that has prompted explanation and exposition by philosophers, politicians and jurists for as long as societies and intellectuals have existed. It is a primary issue for a society to tackle this and these answers have been diverse. This collection of essays approaches some of these questions and answers to shed light on neglected approaches to issues of distribution and how these issues have been dealt with historically, socially, conceptually, and practically. The volume moves away from the more dominating and traditionally cast understandings of distributive justice and shows novel and unique ways to approach distributive issues and how these can help enlighten our course of action and thought today by creating new pathways of understanding. The editors and contributors challenge readers by exploring the role and importance of restorative justice within distributive justice, exploring the long shadow of practices of trusteeship, and concepts of social and individual rights and obligations in welfare and economic systems, social protection/provision schemes, egalitarian practices and post-colonial African political thought. Distributive Justice Debates in Political and Social Thought empowers the reader to cast a more critical and historically complete light on the idea of a fair share and the implications it has on societies and the individuals who comprise them.

AB - Who has what and why in our societies is a pressing issue that has prompted explanation and exposition by philosophers, politicians and jurists for as long as societies and intellectuals have existed. It is a primary issue for a society to tackle this and these answers have been diverse. This collection of essays approaches some of these questions and answers to shed light on neglected approaches to issues of distribution and how these issues have been dealt with historically, socially, conceptually, and practically. The volume moves away from the more dominating and traditionally cast understandings of distributive justice and shows novel and unique ways to approach distributive issues and how these can help enlighten our course of action and thought today by creating new pathways of understanding. The editors and contributors challenge readers by exploring the role and importance of restorative justice within distributive justice, exploring the long shadow of practices of trusteeship, and concepts of social and individual rights and obligations in welfare and economic systems, social protection/provision schemes, egalitarian practices and post-colonial African political thought. Distributive Justice Debates in Political and Social Thought empowers the reader to cast a more critical and historically complete light on the idea of a fair share and the implications it has on societies and the individuals who comprise them.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84960388331&partnerID=8YFLogxK

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U2 - 10.4324/9781315737607

DO - 10.4324/9781315737607

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SN - 9781138900639

BT - Distributive justice debates in political and social thought

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Committing to equality: essays on distributive justice, community, and economics.

In this dissertation, I argue we have reasons acceptable from a wide range of theoretical perspectives to be fairly intolerant of economic inequality. Some of these reasons are often not appreciated, or not appreciated in their full force, by those who occupy those theoretical perspectives. In Chapter I, I defend a modified version of the popular argument that economically egalitarian distributive policies are justified partly because they allow us to communicate equal respect and concern for the worst off. What I say there will also have implications for many issues besides distributive justice, and I will gesture at some of these. Chapter II begins by arguing that being too rich probably tends to be bad for people. I then argue that very rich would probably be better off in a more egalitarian society which prevented them from becoming so rich. The political implications of this conclusion will be most obvious for utilitarians and others who think that distributive justice is intimately related to making people better off, but I’ll also discuss some reasons why other people should find this conclusion interesting, even if they don’t think it justifies preventing people from becoming extremely rich. Chapter III argues that the reasons Rawls gives for accepting the difference principle should have led him to endorse another principle which allows less inequality than the difference principle does. Chapter IV discusses social egalitarianism, the view, held by figures like Elizabeth Anderson, Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, and many others, that social justice obtains when the members of a society stand in relations of equality with each other. I argue that the considerations which motivate social egalitarians should lead them to be less tolerant of economic inequality than many have in fact been. I also argue that these considerations perhaps should have lead Rawls to endorse a constraint on economic inequality which he did not endorse and which is distinct from the one defended in Chapter III. If that’s right, there are therefore potentially two different ways in which Rawls failed to be as economically egalitarian as, by his own lights, he should have been.

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New Perspectives on Distributive Justice

Deep disagreements, pluralism, and the problem of consensus.

• Edited by: Manuel Knoll , Stephen Snyder and Nurdane Şimsek
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• Language: English
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Copyright year: 2019
• Audience: Scholars, institutes, libraries (social and political philosophy; social studies).
• Front matter: 10
• Main content: 563
• Keywords: Rawls ; John ; social justice ; pluralism
• Published: November 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9783110537369
• Published: July 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9783110710236

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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Responsibility and Distributive Justice

Carl Knight and Zofia Stemplowska (eds.),  Responsibility and Distributive Justice , Oxford University Press, 2011, 309pp., $85.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780199565801.

Reviewed by Tamler Sommers, University of Houston

I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. . . . If there's anything going and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving, so you can't have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink, well, a lot more.

                                                                           -- Alfred P. Doolittle (from Pygmalian by Bernard Shaw)

John Rawls' famous "difference principle" states that inequalities within a society are only just if they benefit its least advantaged members. But what if this group includes people like Alfred Doolittle who knowingly make choices that result in their "least advantaged" status? The theory known as "luck egalitarianism" -- the focus of most of the essays in this volume -- attempts to address this difficulty by permitting inequalities that are the product of responsible individual choices and behavior. [1]  A responsibility-sensitive approach enables luck egalitarians to distinguish Alfred Doolittle from people who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own. This uneven collection of essays examines the virtues and problems of luck egalitarianism and offers a series of perspectives on the relationship between responsibility and distributive justice.

Determining the degree to which people are responsible for their relative status is no simple task. What makes Alfred Doolittle such a magnificent comic creation is how straightforward and reflective he is about his plight. He has thought the matter over carefully and decided to lead the life of a drunken deadbeat. He endorses this decision at every level; his commitment, to borrow Frankfurt's language, resounds through his being. If anyone is responsible for his lot in life, it is Alfred P. Doolittle. In real life, however, people like Doolittle are exceptionally rare if they exist at all. A multitude of complex cultural, social, and biological forces influence our actions and decisions, making it difficult or impossible to identify the choices for which we are responsible. Too often, the literature on distributive justice and responsibility (including some of the work in this volume) fails to adequately address this complexity, and this results in theories that rely on empirically dubious assumptions about human agency.

Susan Hurley's chapter, "The Public Ecology of Responsibility," -- one of two outstanding essays in this collection -- provides compelling support for the worry mentioned above. The target of Hurley's essay is traditional liberalism, in particular its assumption of "the priority of private responsibility," which limits government interference and protects individuals' rights to engage in free and responsible behavior. Hurley argues that research in the cognitive sciences undermines the conception of individual responsibility that grounds traditional liberal principles. Responsibility, on the liberal model, presupposes a capacity for rational agency that is internal to the individual. Research suggests, however, that rational agency "is profoundly embedded in and dependent on the individual's social environment." (192). Consequently, "private responsibility cannot unilaterally provide the limits of public action because individual responsibility isn't private or prior to public action, but has a public ecology to which government action -- or inaction -- inevitably contributes." (192) Hurley presents a wide range of evidence supporting this view of rationality as dependent on processes of ecological attunement. One may quibble with her analysis of a particular study, but it is hard to deny that the research when taken altogether (and there is plenty more that Hurley does not mention) casts serious empirical doubt on the model of classical rationality that is at the heart of traditional liberal principles.

Note that Hurley's challenge applies equally well to most forms of luck egalitarianism, since their proponents employ the same conception of rational agency in order to determine individual responsibility. This is a potentially fatal problem that must be addressed. A worthwhile theory of distributive justice must describe a just system for human beings and not for abstractions that never have existed and never will exist. Unfortunately, most of the authors in this volume, if they acknowledge this worry at all, seem content to sweep it under the rug. Consider, for example, Larry Temkin's discussion of (moral desert for one's character) and its connection to responsibility. Temkin writes:

I believe that the most compelling conception of absolute justice requires the kind of free will that is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism, and that is notoriously difficult to square with our scientific world view and the obvious way in which both nature and nurture influence our characters . I think we must face this fact head on, and not try to deny it or run from it .  I am aware, of course, that many will regard my claims here as tantamount to a  reductio  of the notion of absolute justice. But I do not share this sentiment. Though I don't have the foggiest idea how to solve the mare's nest of (meaningful!) free will, I believe that there is reason to believe, or at least hope, that many rational beings  are  sufficiently free, in the relevant sense, as to make attributions of responsibility for their characters appropriate. Correspondingly, I suspect the notion of absolute justice is not incoherent -- even if we don't understand how it could be coherent -- and believe that  it should be given significant weight in our moral deliberations. [2]  (55-56, my emphasis)

This is a truly remarkable passage -- I had to read it over several times to make sure I had read it correctly. Temkin begins by claiming that our notion of absolute justice requires a type of free will that is, at best, very difficult to square with our scientific world view. Indeed, he claims not even to understand how the notion could be coherent. After confessing that doesn't have the foggiest idea how to solve this problem, he nevertheless maintains that there is reason to believe, or at least hope (!), that many of us are free in this sense. Therefore, according to Temkin, absolute justice should still be given significant weight in our moral deliberations, and by extension in our theories of distributive justice. And all of this comes just after the valiant claim that we must face the problem "head on, and not try to run and hide from it"!

Temkin is far from the only philosopher in this debate to blithely ignore the "mare's nest" of freedom and responsibility. This raises troubling methodological and moral concerns about how the debate is conducted. One simply cannot examine the relationship between responsibility and justice without addressing the thorny problems that surround responsibility attribution. All of the impressive and highly technical philosophical machinery, the dizzying array of distinctions, concept clarifications, and counterexamples, amount to very little if the core assumptions of the theories are false. And since these theories have practical import, it is all the more crucial to base them on plausible foundations. If we are to use notions of free will and individual responsibility to justify inequalities, then the notions must be compatible with a scientific understanding of human behavior. Merely asserting -- or hoping -- that the relevant capacities exist is not enough.

With that off my chest, I should say that there is much of value in this collection, and that includes Temkin's essay, which in another section offers a keen analysis of how fairness relates to equality and the egalitarian vision. Richard Arneson's "Luck Egalitarianism -- A Primer" gives a clear presentation of the central issues within that theory, along with intriguing arguments of his own within each section. Norman Daniels applies Rawlsian principles of justice to three social health-care experiments that attempt to provide incentives to individuals to live healthier lives. He argues that these principles better accord with our intuitions than those of the luck egalitarian. Matt Matravers argues that notions of responsibility employed in theories of distributive justice should apply to theories of retributive justice as well. He claims that there is no principled reason to employ different conceptions, as Rawls and others have tried to do. Matravers rejects Samuel Scheffler's view that distributive justice is holistic whereas retributive justice is individualistic, which Scheffler uses to justify the different roles that responsibility should play. The other chapters (save for one discussed below) will be better appreciated by readers who are more convinced than I am of the overarching value of abstract analyses on this topic. One striking feature the chapters share in common is the virtual absence of any discussion about the policy implications of their theories.

I mentioned above that there were two outstanding essays in the volume. Hurley, in her chapter, effectively challenged those theories that employ idealized and empirically inadequate conceptions of individual responsibility. Appropriately, the chapter that follows -- Avner de-Shalit and Jonathan Wolff's "The Apparent Asymmetry of Responsibility" -- is a brilliant example of how to address the connection between responsibility and justice in a way that avoids these difficulties. De-Shalit and Wolff argue in favor of a "weak asymmetry thesis," the view that society should allow people to benefit from choices that turn out well to a greater extent than it allows people to suffer from choices that turn out badly. They describe several ways in which their proposal could be implemented (something that already sets this article apart from most of the others in this volume), and they defend the proposal against both practical and moral objections. Throughout the essay, de-Shalit and Wolff employ a minimalist and entirely uncontroversial understanding of "choice," one that does not require the kind of ultimate responsibility that concerns Temkin. When their argument relies on empirical assumptions, the authors offer suggestive, if not decisive, evidence in their favor. The end result is a convincing, well grounded proposal that could plausibly apply to society as it is presently composed.

De-Shalit and Wolff offer some important methodological insights as well. In a discussion of the now common distinction between "ideal" and "non-ideal" theories of justice, the authors argue for the virtues of the latter. Ideal theories, they write, rely on a "hugely simplified model of the world . . . with known variables, and highly reliable information flows." (219) By contrast, non-ideal theories are designed for real-world conditions, which often require "abandoning our highest aspirations and replacing them with others that have a higher likelihood of successful implementation." (219) A non-ideal theory, according to the authors, will be a theory of balance and compromise. Consequently, if someone wishes to criticize a non-ideal theory, it is not enough to point to a flaw or undesirable consequence. One must show that a better alternative approach is possible under real-world conditions. More generally, the authors insist on the non-ideal approach because "arguments made for or against a theory using an abstract model of the world cannot always be assumed to work as well in the conditions of the real world, where the conditions of the model may not hold." (219) I would add that the problem with ideal theories is not merely one of implementation, but also, as I have emphasized, their dependence on implausible assumptions about human agency.

Let me conclude by saying something nice about the 'ideal theory' approach that characterizes most of the essays in this volume. Responsibility-sensitive policies are prevalent in Western democratic societies. Appeals to individual choice and responsibility are common in political rhetoric concerning health-care, welfare, taxation, and education. As Knight and Stemplowska note in their introduction, a somewhat ironic consequence of the philosophical debate is that it has undermined a number of these policies, and much of the rhetoric, by showing "the many assumptions and countless difficulties involved in attributing responsibility in a way that could justify withholding assistance from those in need." (22). Of course, this result sometimes comes about inadvertently -- philosophers do not always acknowledge these assumptions and difficulties. But the editors are correct that careful philosophical attention to the connection between responsibility and justice -- even when conducted on an abstract level -- has elevated the debate above simple ideology and exposed many of the pitfalls and controversial assumptions required for determining responsibility. With this accomplished, my hope is that the philosophical debate shifts in the "non-ideal" direction, with more focus on theories that apply to the world we live in and to human beings as we really are.

[1]  Richard Arneson, in his contribution to this volume, notes that the case of Alfred Doolittle made him question the difference principle and try to elaborate a responsibility-sensitive approach to justice.

[2]  Temkin does conclude the paragraph by adding that "there may be many cases where people are not (fully) responsible for their characters, in which cases the notion of absolute justice will not be (fully or straightforwardly) applicable." (56) But of course, this is not the point. Given his remarks a few sentences earlier, it is unclear why he is confident that  anyone  is, or can be, responsible for their characters in the sense required for absolute justice.

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12 On the Relationship Between Corrective and Distributive Justice

• Published: March 2000
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Distributive justice is concerned with the just distribution of material resources, income, other forms of wealth, and perhaps certain other goods within a society. Corrective justice is concerned with the moral duty of repair, meaning the moral duty to pay compensation, that one individual can come to owe another as a result of having harmed him. In this essay, I inquire into the relationship between these two principles. More particularly, I ask whether corrective and distributive justice are independent principles, or whether they are related in either a conceptual or a normative sense. One common view is that corrective justice requires a prior distribution of entitlements upon which to operate, and that its purpose or point is to maintain that distribution; for that reason, it is regarded as both conceptually and normatively ancillary to distributive justice. Another, less common, view holds that corrective and distributive justice operate on quite distinct kinds of entitlement, and hence are conceptually and normatively independent of one another. The position I defend is that corrective justice is a general moral principle that is concerned, not with maintaining a just distribution, but rather with repairing harm. Individuals can be harmed in a number of different ways, and corrective justice accordingly protects a number of different kinds of interest and entitlement. Distributive justice often contributes to the legitimacy of an entitlement that corrective justice protects, and in that sense there is a normative connection between the two. But corrective justice does not protect the entitlement qua distributive share, and its purpose is not to maintain or preserve a distributive scheme as such. Rather it protects a legitimate entitlement because interference with the entitlement harms the entitlement-holder. In that sense, corrective and distributive justice are conceptually independent.

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Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — Criminal Law — When Should Distributive Justice Be Used In Criminal Justice

When Should Distributive Justice Be Used in Criminal Justice

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Supplement to Distributive Justice

Extended bibliography on distributive justice.

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• Andre, Judith, 1995, “Blocked Exchanges: A Taxonomy,” in Pluralism, Justice, and Equality , David Miller Walzer and Michael, eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 171–196.
• Annis, David B. and Annis, F., 1986, “Merit Pay, Utilitarianism, and Desert,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy , 3: 33–41.
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• –––, 1993, “Market Socialism and Egalitarian Ethics,” in Market Socialism: The Current Debate , Pranab K. Bardhan Roemer and John E., eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 281–297.
• –––, 2000, “Economic Analysis Meets Distributive Justice,” Social Theory and Practice: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Philosophy , 26(2): 327–345.
• –––, 2001, “Luck and Equality II,” Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volume, no. 75 (suppl.) , 73–90.
• –––, 2002, “Why Justice Requires Transfers to Offset Income and Wealth Inequalities,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 19(1): 172–200.
• Arnold, N. Scott, 1985, “Capitalists and the Ethics of Contribution,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 15: 89–105.
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• –––, 1994, The Philosophy and Economics of Market Socialism: A Critical Study , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Arrow, Kenneth J., 1984, Social Choice and Justice , Collected Papers of Kenneth J. Arrow ; v.1., Oxford: Blackwell.
• Arthur, John and Shaw, William H. (eds.), 1978, Justice and Economic Distribution , Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
• Atkinson, A. B., 1983, Social Justice and Public Policy , Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Baker, John, 1992, “An Egalitarian Case for Basic Income,” in Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform , Philippe Van Parijs, ed., London: Verso, 101–127.
• Barry, Brian, 1988, “Equal Opportunity and Moral Arbitrariness,” in Equal Opportunity , Norman E. Bowie, ed., Boulder and London: Westview Press, 23–44.
• –––, 1989, Theories of Justice, Vol. 1 , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• –––, 1992, “Equality Yes, Basic Income No,” in Arguing for Basic Income: Ethical Foundations for a Radical Reform , Philippe Van Parijs, ed., London: Verso, 128–140.
• –––, 1995a, Justice as Impartiality , Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
• –––, 1995b, “Spherical Justice and Global Injustice,” in Pluralism, Justice, and Equality , David Miller Walzer and Michael, eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 67–80.
• Barry, Brian M., 1973, The Liberal Theory of Justice: A Critical Examination of the Principal Doctrines in "A Theory of Justice" by John Rawls , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Bauer, P.T., 1981, Equality, The Third World and Economic Delusion , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Baumol, William J. and Fischer, Dietrich, 1986, Superfairness : Applications and Theory , Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
• Becker, Lawrence C., 1977, Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations , Boston , Mass.: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.
• –––, 1980, “The Moral Basis of Property Rights,” in NOMOS XX11 , John W. Chapman Pennock and J. Roland, eds., New York: New York University Press, 187–220.
• Bertram, Christopher, 1993, “Principles of Distributive Justice, Counterfactuals and History,” Journal of Political Philosophy , 1: 213–228.
• Blake, Michael, 2001, “Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy”, Philosophy and Public Affairs , 30(3): 257–296.
• Blocker, Gene H., and Elizabeth H. Smith (eds.), 1980, “John Rawls' Theory of Social Justice:”, Athens: Ohio University Press.
• Bojer, Hilde, 2003, Distributional Justice : Theory and Measurement , Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy ; 47., London ; New York: Routledge.
• Bowie, Norman E. (ed.), 1988, Equal Opportunity , Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
• Boylan, Michael, 2004, A Just Society , Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
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• Buchanan, Allen, 1988, Ethics, Efficiency, and the Market , Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield.
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• Carens, Joseph, 1981, Equality, Moral Incentives and the Market , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Carter, Alan, 2000, “Distributive Justice and Environmental Sustainability,” Heythrop Journal: A Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology , 41(4): 449–460.
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• Christman, John, 1988, “Entrepreneurs, Profits, and Deserving Market Shares,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 6: 1–16.
• –––, 1994, The Myth of Property , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Clayton, Matthew and Williams, Andrew, 2004, Social Justice , Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing.
• Cohen, G.A., 1992, “Incentives, Inequality, and Community,” in Grethe B. Peterson (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values , Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
• –––, 1995, “The Pareto Argument for Inequality,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 12: 160–185.
• –––, 1995, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1997, “Where the Action is: On the Site of Distributive Justice,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 26(1): 3–30.
• –––, 2000, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Copp, David, “The Right to an Adequate Standard of Living: Justice, Autonomy, and the Basic Needs,” Social Philosophy and Policy 9. 1 (Jan 1992): 231–261.
• Corlett, J. Angelo (ed.), 1991, Equality and Liberty: Analyzing Rawls and Nozick , St.Martins Press.
• Crocker, Lawrence, 1977, “Equality, Solidarity, and Rawls' Maximin,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 6: 262–266.
• Daniels, Norman, 1978, “Merit and Meritocracy,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 7: 206–223.
• –––, 1985, “Fair Equality of Opportunity and Decent Minimums: A reply to Buchanan,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 14: 106–111.
• –––, 1988, Am I my Parents' Keeper? : An Essay on Justice Between the Young and the Old , New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1990, “Equality of What: Welfare, Resources, or Capabilities?,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 50: 273–296.
• Daniels, Norman (ed.), 1975, Reading Rawls: Critical Studies of A Theory of Justice , Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Dick, James, 1975, “How to Justify a Distribution of Earnings,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 4: 248–72.
• Dworkin, Ronald, 1981a, “What is Equality? Part 1: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 10: 185–246.
• –––, 1981b, “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Welfare,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 10: 283–345.
• –––, 1983, “In Defense of Equality,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 1: 24–40.
• Elster, Jon, 1992, Local Justice : How Institutions Allocate Scarce Goods and Necessary Burdens , Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1995a, “The Empirical Study of Justice,” in Pluralism, Justice, and Equality , David Miller Walzer and Michael, eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 81–98.
• –––, 1995b, Local Justice in America , New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Farrelly, Colin, 2002, “Genes and Social Justice: A Rawlsian Reply to Moore,” Bioethics , 16(1): 72–83.
• Feinberg, Joel, 1970, Doing and Deserving , New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Feldman, Fred, 19, “Justice, Desert, and the Repugnant Conclusion,” Utilitas , 7: 189–206.
• Feser, E. 2005, “Personal Identity and Self-Ownership,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 22: 100–125.
• Fleurbaey, Marc, 1995, “Equal Opportunity or Equal Social Outcome?,” Economics and Philosophy , 11: 25–55.
• –––, 2005, “Book symposium: Justice, Luck and Knowledge by S.L. Hurley: Neutralising Luck, Rewarding Effort,” Philosophical Books , 46(3): 188–198.
• Flew, Anthony, 1981, The Politics of Procrustes , London: Temple Smith.
• –––, 1978, “Equality or Justice?” Midwest Studies in Philosophy , 3: 176–194.
• Frank, Jill, 1998, “Democracy and Distribution: Aristotle on Just Desert,” Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy , 26(6): 784–802.
• Fraser, Nancy, 1997, Justice Interruptus : Critical Reflections on the "Postsocialist" Condition , New York: Routledge.
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• –––, 2004, “Left-Libertarianism: A Review Essay,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 32: 66-92.
• –––, 2005, “Left-Libertarianism, Once More: A rejoinder to Vallentyne, Steiner, and Otsuka,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 33(2): 216–222.
• Fried, Charles, 1983, “Distributive Justice,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 1: 45–59.
• Frohlich, N. and Oppenheimer, J., 1992, Choosing Justice , Berkeley: University of California Press.
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• –––, 1991, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State , New York: Cambridge University Press.
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• –––, 1988, “A Problem about the Basis of Desert,” Journal of Social Philosophy , 19: 11–19.
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• Gaus, Gerald F., 1980, “Property and Justice: A Select Bibliography,” in NOMOS XX11 , John W. Chapman Pennock and J. Roland, eds., New York: New York University Press, 385–406.
• –––, 1989, “A Contractual Justification of Redistributive Capitalism,” in NOMOS XXX1 , John W. Chapman Pennock and J. Roland, eds., New York: New York University Press, 89–121.
• –––, 1990, Value and Justification: The Foundations of Liberal Theory , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1991, “Does Compensation Restore Equality?” in NOMOS XXXIII . Compensatory Justice , John W. Chapman, ed., New York: New York University Press, 45–81.
• –––, 1996, Justificatory Liberalism , New York: Oxford University Press.
• Gaus, G., 2012, The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gaus, G. and E. Mack, 2004, “Libertarianism and Classical Liberalism,” in A Handbook of Political Theory , G. Gaus and C. Kukathus (eds.), London: Routledge, pp. 115-129.
• Gauthier, David, 1974, “Justice and Natural Endowment: Toward a critique of Rawls' Ideological Framework,” Social Theory and Practice , 3: 3–26.
• –––, 1982, “Justified Inequality?” Dialogue (Canada) , 21: 431–443.
• –––, 1986, Morals by Agreement , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Gibbard, Allan, 1976, “Natural Property Rights,” Nous , 10: 77–86.
• Glover, Jonathan (ed.), 1990, Utilitarianism and Its Critics , New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
• Goldman, Alan H., 1977, “The Principle of Equal Opportunity,” Southern Journal of Philosophy , 15: 473–485.
• –––, 1987, “The Justification of Equal Opportunity,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 5: 88–103.
• Goodin, Robert E., 1985, “Negating Positive Desert Claims,” Political Theory , 13: 575–598.
• Goodin, Robert E., 1988, Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State , New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 1995, Utilitarianism as a Public Philosophy , New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Goodrum, Crain R., 1977, “Rawls and Equalitarianism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 37: 386–393.
• Goodwin, Barbara, 1992, Justice by Lottery , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Gordon, Scott, 1980, Welfare, Justice, and Freedom , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Gorr, Michael, 1995, “Justice, Self-ownership, and Natural Assets,” Social Philosophy and Policy , 12: 267–291.
• Graham, Kevin, 2002, “Autonomy, Individualism, and Social Justice,” Journal of Value Inquiry , 36(1): 43–57.
• Gray, T. S., 1981, “Herbert Spencer's Theory of Social Justice – Desert or Entitlement?” History of Political Thought , 2: 161–186.
• Gutmann, Amy, 1980, Liberal Equality , London: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1995, “Justice Across the Spheres”, in Pluralism,Justice, and Equality , David Miller Walzer and Michael, eds., New York: Oxford University Press, 99–119.
• Hardin, Russell, 1999, “From Bodo Ethics to Distributive Justice,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice: An International Forum , 2(4): 399–413.
• Haslett, D. W., 1986, “Is Inheritance Justified,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 15: 122–155.
• Haubrich, Dirk, 2004, “Global Distributive Justice and the Taxation of Natural Resources-Who Should Pick up the Tab?” Contemporary Political Theory , 3(1): 48–69.
• Haworth, Alan, 1994, Anti-libertarianism , London: Routledge.
• Hayek, Friedrich A., 1960, The Constitution of Liberty , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 1973, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 1: Rules and Order , London: Routledge.
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Distributive Justice

Distributive justice is concerned with fair allocation of resources among all members of the society. Fair allocation includes distributing all the benefits, burdens and the pattern of distribution that results. The principle of distributive justice talks about how benefits and burdens of an economy are shared equally and distributed. Nonetheless, these communities have limited resources; the question is how these benefits should be distributed equally. The answer is that equality and equity are the criteria to define a fair share to all.

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The principle of equality determines who gets what. One the other hand the principle of equity, distributes benefits according to an individual contribution. Therefore, those who are more productive in the economy deserve to receive more benefits. Comparatively, fair distribution of benefits and burdens of development, the community at an international level must work diligently to include the interpretation of the Bill of Human Rights to state the economic and social status as well as property. It is the duty of every country to ensure that its development policy ensures and human rights and freedoms are fully utilized. The development policy should also ensure that all economic and social reforms get rid of the social injustices.

Economys benefits include environmental resources, such as water resources, land among others. Most of these resources are public assets, so for them to be equitably distributed in the society there is need for a legal framework that rests on the private property to use a natural resource. This framework will allow those people in need of these resources to use them without any restrictions. Communities also need to come up with projects that will enable them to use resources collectively for better results. For instance if a certain community has rivers, the best way to be to effective and helpful top other people, it has to set up irrigation schemes for other communities. These irrigation schemes will encourage farming activities within the regions. Alternatively, they can set up dams from these downstream water resources. For possible adverse impacts and effects that either directly or indirectly arise from such kinds of projects, there need to be agreement of coming up with some amount of money to facilitate the project.

Ownership and sovereignty are two institutions based on legal framework on access and use of natural resources. Unfortunately sovereignty does not allow for fair share of economys benefits and burdens since it does not consider equality. There is need for reconstructing the basic structure of national and international societies. State must guarantee the citizens free access and use of these natural resources. All communities need to strive to understand the principle of the article that addresses issues both in genetic and natural resources. When people are obligated to the rights of use, preferential use of these resources should not be given. This will allow resources to be planned in a manner which they are compatible to a wide range of activities.

Payment of taxes and imposes are usually paid by everyone in a state. Taxes should promote economic growth and by doing so the revenues to fund government activities need not to harm citizens. Tax systems should be simple and reformed since they largely benefit upper income taxpayers. Those who are considered the middle-class are the ones who carry the burden of funding the government.

The findings of the article on equality, non-discrimination and fair distribution of the benefits of development are that positive and negative concepts of the principle of equality are not the same. The positive concept states that everyone needs equal treatment while the negative concept argues that the principle should allow differences in treatment.

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