Global justice

Context

The broader philosophical context of the global justice debate, in both its contemporary and historical forms, is the issue of impartiality. Many people believe they have more important duties to family members, friends and compatriots than to strangers and foreigners. But are they right to endorse such partiality?

Cosmopolitans, reportedly including the ancient Greek Diogenes of Sinope, have described themselves as citizens of the world.Thinkers including the utilitarian anarchist William Godwin have argued that everyone has an impartial duty to do the most good he or she can, without preference for any one human being over another.

The broader political context of the debate is the longstanding conflict between more and less local institutions: tribes against states, villages against cities, local communities against empires, nation-states against the UN.

The relative strength of the local versus the global has waxed and waned over recorded history. From the early modern period until the twentieth century, the preeminent political institution was the state, which is sovereign, territorial, claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of power in its territory, and exists in an international system of other sovereign states.

Over the same period, and relatedly, political philosophers' interest in justice focused almost exclusively on domestic issues: how should states treat their subjects, and what do fellow-citizens owe one another? Justice in relations between states, and between individuals across state borders, was put aside as a secondary issue or left to international relations theorists.

Since the First World War, however, the state system has been transformed by globalization and by the creation of supranational political and economic institutions such as the League of nations, the UN, and the World Bank.

Over the same period, and especially since the 1970s, global justice became an important issue in political philosophy. In the contemporary global justice debate, the general issue of impartiality centers on the moral significance of borders and of shared citizenship. Realists, particularists, nationalists, members of the society of states tradition, and cosmopolitans take contesting positions in response to these problems.

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