•  1738
    In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, s…Read more
  •  524
    What are the obligations of pharmaceutical companies in a global health emergency?
    with Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Allen Buchanan, Shuk Ying Chan, Cécile Fabre, Daniel Halliday, Joseph Heath, Lisa Herzog, R. J. Leland, Matthew S. McCoy, Ole F. Norheim, Carla Saenz, G. Owen Schaefer, Kok-Chor Tan, Christopher Heath Wellman, Jonathan Wolff, and Govind Persad
    Lancet 398 (10304): 1015. 2021.
    All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including…Read more
  •  201
    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 i…Read more
  •  185
    Internecine War Killings
    Utilitas 24 (2): 214-236. 2012.
    In his recent book Killing in War, McMahan develops a powerful argument for the view that soldiers on opposite sides of a conflict are not morally on a par once the war has started: whether they have the right to kill depends on the justness of their war. In line with just war theory in general, McMahan scrutinizes the ethics of killing the enemy. In this article, I accept McMahan's account, but bring it to bear on the entirely neglected, but nevertheless interesting, issue of what the military …Read more
  •  132
    The Duty to Accept Apologies
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 1-24. forthcoming.
    The literature on reparative justice focuses for the most part on the grounds and limits of wrongdoers' duties to their victims. An interesting but relatively neglected question is that of what - if anything - victims owe to wrongdoers. In this paper, I argue that victims are under a duty to accept wrongdoers' apologies. To accept an apology is to form the belief that the wrongdoer's apologetic utterance or gesture has the requisite verdictive, commissive and expressive dimensions; to communicat…Read more
  •  129
    Against body exceptionalism: A reply to Eyal
    Utilitas 21 (2): 246-248. 2009.
    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…Read more
  •  122
    To Deliberate or to Discourse
    European Journal of Political Theory 2 (1): 107-115. 2003.
  •  120
    In his recent Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen mounts a sustained critique of coerced labour, against the background of a radical egalitarian conception of distributive justice. In this article, I argue that Cohenian egalitarians are committed to holding the talented under a moral duty to choose socially useful work for the sake of the less fortunate. As I also show, Cohen's arguments against coerced labour fail, particularly in the light of his commitment to coercive taxation. In the …Read more
  •  114
    Do we have the right to deny others access to our body? What if this would harm those who need personal services or body parts from us? Ccile Fabre examines the impact that arguments for distributive justice have on the rights we have over ourselves, and on such contentious issues as organ sales, prostitution, and surrogate motherhood
  •  111
    Military Intervention in Interstate Armed Conflicts
    Social Philosophy and Policy. forthcoming.
    Suppose that state A attacks state D without warrant. The ensuing military conflict threatens international peace and security. State D (I assume) has a justification for defending itself by means of military force. But do third parties have a justification for intervening in that conflict by such means? To international public lawyers, the well-rehearsed and obvious answer is ‘yes’: threats to international peace and security provide one of two exceptions to the legal and moral prohibition (as …Read more
  •  107
    VIII-Permissible Rescue Killings
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 109 (1pt2): 149-164. 2009.
  •  97
    III—Doxastic Wrongs, Non-Spurious Generalizations and Particularized Beliefs
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 122 (1): 47-69. 2022.
    According to the doxastic wrongs thesis, holding certain beliefs about others can be morally wrongful. Beliefs which take the form of stereotypes based on race and gender and which turn out to be false and are negatively valenced are prime candidates for the charge of doxastic wronging: it is no coincidence that most of the cases discussed in the literature involve false beliefs. My aim in this paper is to show that the thesis of doxastic wrongs does not turn on the truth-value or valence of bel…Read more
  •  91
    Cosmopolitan war
    Oxford University Press. 2012.
    Introduction -- Cosmopolitanism -- Collective self-defense -- Subsistence wars -- Humanitarian intervention -- Commodified wars -- Asymmetrical wars -- Conclusion.
  •  83
    Global Distributive Justice: An Egalitarian Perspective
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (sup1): 139-164. 2005.
    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 c…Read more
  •  77
    Permissible rescue killings
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 109 (1pt2): 149-164. 2009.
    Many believe that agent-centred considerations, unlike agent-neutral reasons, cannot show that victims have the right to kill their attackers in self-defence, let alone establish that rescuers have the right to come to their help. In this paper, I argue that the right to kill in self- or other-defence is best supported by a hybrid set of reasons. In particular, agent-centred considerations account for the plausible intuition that victims have a special stake, which other parties lack, in being t…Read more
  •  77
    Mandatory rescue killings
    Journal of Political Philosophy 15 (4). 2007.
  •  67
    Good samaritanism : A matter of justice
    In Jonathan Seglow (ed.), Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, F. Cass Publishers. pp. 128-144. 2002.
    Liberal theorists of justice hardly ever study duties of Good Samaritanism. This is not to say that they regard a failure to be a Good Samaritan as morally acceptable: indeed, most of them think that it is morally wrong. But they tend not to think that it is morally wrong on the grounds that it constitutes a violation of a duty of justice. Rather, they condemn it as a failure to perform a duty of charity, or as a failure to be appropriately altruistic. By contrast, they condemn as a violation of…Read more
  •  66
    The Morality of Gossip: A Kantian Account
    Ethics 134 (1): 32-56. 2023.
    Gossip is pervasive and complex. It lubricates and wrecks social relationships. Many people openly confess to loving “a good gossip” yet acknowledge that gossiping, while often gratifying, is sometimes morally problematic. Surprisingly, gossip has not received much attention in moral philosophy. In this article, I argue that, notwithstanding its valuable relational and social functions, it is wrongful, at least in some of its forms, when and to the extent that it amounts to a particular kind of …Read more
  •  62
    Reply to Wilkinson
    Res Publica 14 (2): 137-140. 2008.
    In his review of my book Whose Body is It Anyway, Wilkinson criticises the view (which I defend) that confiscating live body parts for the sake of the needy is (under some circumstances) a requirement of justice. Wilkinson makes the following three points: (a) the confiscation thesis is problematic on its own terms; (b) there is a way to justify coercive resource transfers without being committed to it; (c) the thesis rests on a highly questionable approach to the status of the body. Wilkinson’s…Read more
  •  59
    The Morality of Defensive War (edited book)
    with Seth Lazar
    Oxford University Press. 2014.
    International law and conventional morality grant that states may stand ready to defend their borders with lethal force. But what grounds the permission to kill for the sake of political sovereignty and territorial integrity? In this book leading theorists address this vexed issue, and set the terms of future debate over national defence
  •  57
    Should governments give special rights to ethnic and cultural minorities? Should rich countries open their borders to economic immigrants or transfer resources to poor countries? When framing and implementing economic and environmental policies, should current generations take into account the interests of future generations? If our political community committed a wrong against another group a hundred years ago, do we owe reparations to current members of that group? These are just some of the p…Read more
  •  54
    The choice-based right to bequeath
    Analysis 61 (1): 60-65. 2001.
  •  45
    Justice, fairness, and world ownership
    Law and Philosophy 21 (3): 249-273. 2002.
    It is a central tenet of most contemporary theories of justice that the badly-off have a right to some of the resources of the well-off. In this paper, I take as my starting point two principles of justice, to wit, the principle of sufficiency, whereby individuals have a right to the material resources they need in order to lead a decent life, and the principle of autonomy, whereby once everybody has such a life, individuals should be allowed to pursue their conception of the good, and to enjoy …Read more
  •  41
    Constitutionalising social rights
    Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (3). 1998.
  •  36
    COVID-19 vaccines are likely to be scarce for years to come. Many countries, from India to the U.K., have demonstrated vaccine nationalism. What are the ethical limits to this vaccine nationalism? Neither extreme nationalism nor extreme cosmopolitanism is ethically justifiable. Instead, we propose the fair priority for residents framework, in which governments can retain COVID-19 vaccine doses for their residents only to the extent that they are needed to maintain a noncrisis level of mortality …Read more
  •  35
    Rights, Justice and War: A Reply
    Law and Philosophy 33 (3): 391-425. 2014.
    I offer a response to Rodin’s, Statman’s, Stilz’s, and Tadros’ papers on my book Cosmopolitan War
  •  33
    Nigel Biggar’s Just War: Reflections on jus ad bellum
    Studies in Christian Ethics 28 (3): 292-297. 2015.
    This paper raises some questions about Biggar’s accounts of the just cause and proportionality criteria for a just war. With respect to just cause, it argues that Biggar is committed to a broader range of justifications for war than one might think. Regarding proportionality, it claims that his account thereof invites reflection on the morality of conscription, and, more important still, given the book’s main aim—to refute Christian pacifism—in fact should lead him to embrace pacifism