Cecile Fabre

The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been characterized by the deployment of large private military forces, under contract with the US administration. The use of so-called private military corporations and, more generally, of mercenaries, has long attracted criticisms. This article argues that under certain conditions, there is nothing inherently objectionable about mercenarism. It begins by exposing a weakness in the most obvious justification for mercenarism, to wit, the justification from freedom of occupational choice. It then deploys a less obvious, but stronger, argument – one that appeals to the importance of enabling just defensive killings. Finally, it rebuts five moral objections to mercenarism.

In this paper, I explore and probe Joseph Carens’ remarks, in his recent book The Ethics of Immigration, on the immigration status of foreign convicted criminals who have served their sentence, and who wish either to immigrate into our country or who are already here. Carens rejects deportation when it is not called for by considerations of national security, and agrees that considerations of public order can justify barring convicted foreign criminals from entering the country. I broadly agree with his arguments against deportation: my remarks in this respect are clarificatory and exploratory as much as anything else. But both his argument for open borders and his scepticism with respect to radical cosmopolitanism are in tension with his claim that past criminal convictions can act as a bar to entry.

A good deal of political theory over the last fifteen years or so has been shaped by the realization that one cannot, and ought not, consider the distribution of resources within a country in isolation from the distribution of resources between countries. Thus, thinkers such as Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge advocate extensive global distributive policies; others, such as Charles Jones and David Miller, explicitly reject the view that egalitarian principles of justice should apply globally and claim that national communities have only duties to help other countries be viable economically and meet the basic needs of their members. In the global justice debate, pretty much all parties acknowledge that we have obligations of distributive justice to for-eigners. The question is how strong those obligations are, and in particular whether national boundaries can make any difference to the distribution of resources between members of different countries.

It is hard to do justice, in a short reply, to Eyal's excellent review. Accordingly, I will focus on what I take to be its central claim – namely that I fail to give proper consideration to the extent to which the forced extraction of body parts undermines individuals' opportunities for self-respect. According to Eyal, ‘body exceptionalism’ can be defended on the following grounds: ‘People usually see trespass into a person and into objects they associate with a person – especially into a person's body – as utterly disrespectful towards that person and her autonomy’ . And later: ‘Whether or not organ confiscation is truly disrespectful . . . its widespread and intractable perception as a humiliating violation counts heavily against it, because it can thwart opportunities for self-respect’

This paper argues that, if one thinks that the needy have a right to the material resources they need in order to lead decent lives, one must be committed, in some cases, to conferring on the sick a right that the healthy give them some of the body parts they need to lead such a life. I then assess two objections against that view, to wit: to confer on the sick a right to the live body parts of the healthy violates the bodily integrity of the latter; and constitutes too much of an interference in their life. I conclude that although the sick sometimes have a right to some of the body parts of the healthy, the latter still retain a considerable degree of autonomy