Laura Valentini

Philosophical discussion of human rights has long been monopolised by what might be called the ‘natural-law view’. On this view, human rights are fundamental moral rights which people enjoy solely by virtue of their humanity. In recent years, a number of theorists have started to question the validity of this outlook, advocating instead what they call a ‘political’ view. My aim in this article is to explore the latter view in order to establish whether it constitutes a valuable alternative to the ‘natural-law view’. In particular, I distinguish between three ways in which human rights can be political: in relation to their (1) iudicandum, (2) justification and (3) feasibility constraints. I argue that it makes sense to think of human rights as political in relation to both their iudicandum and their justification but in a way that is not always adequately captured by proponents of the political view.Moreover, I also claim that, if we take the political view seriously, we still need to engage in the sort of abstract moral reasoning that characterises the natural-law approach and which proponents of the political view significantly downplay.

This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories (e.g., the reflective-equilibrium method), for the purpose of justifying or criticizing them. Finally, it looks at a recent debate on how abstract and idealized political theory should be, and assesses the significance of disagreement in political theory. The discussion is carried out from an angle inspired by the philosophy of science.

Much recent philosophical work on social freedom focuses on whether freedom should be understood as non-interference, in the liberal tradition associated with Isaiah Berlin, or as non-domination, in the republican tradition revived by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner. We defend a conception of freedom that lies between these two alternatives: freedom as independence. Like republican freedom, it demands the robust absence of relevant constraints on action. Unlike republican, and like liberal freedom, it is not moralized. We show that freedom as independence retains the virtues of its liberal and republican counterparts while shedding their vices. Our aim is to put this conception of freedom more firmly on the map and to offer a novel perspective on the logical space in which different conceptions of freedom are located.

Our lives are increasingly governed by decisions taken beyond the state— examples include ICJ verdicts, WTO rules, and EU regulations. But under what conditions are these decisions authoritative? And how do these conditions relate to substantive criteria of justice? To answer this question, I discuss three families of accounts of legitimate authority: purely procedural, purely instrumental, and mutualdependence accounts. Purely procedural accounts take justice and authority to be altogether separate. Purely instrumental accounts make attributions of authority entirely dependent on institutions’ efficacy in realizing justice. Mutual-dependence accounts see justice and authority as mutually defining each other. On these accounts, an institution has authority if and only if it does what it reasonably can to omnilaterally interpret and secure the demands of justice. I argue that mutualdependence accounts are superior to their rivals, and conclude by sketching their implications for the authority of the ICJ and the WTO.

This thesis addresses a central question in the current philosophical debate on global justice: Can Rawlsian liberal principles of justice be coherently extended from the domestic to the global arena? My discussion of this question –which I call the 'question of extension' - is subdivided into three parts. In parts I and II, I critically analyse the two most prominent existing answers to it: the positive answer, championed by so-called cosmopolitans, and the negative one, championed by so-called social liberals. I show that these two answers encounter theoretical as well as practical difficulties, and argue that their inadequacies are traceable to methodological flaws in the two outlooks supporting them. In part Ill, I attempt to elaborate a new answer to the question of extension that avoids the theoretical and practical difficulties identified in parts I and II. Taking the lead from recent contributions to the global justice debate, I develop a deontological coercion-based approach to global justice. On this approach, principles of justice - at any level, global or domestic - place limits on how people may permissibly coerce one another (i.e., on how they may constrain one another's freedom) and apply to both interactional (direct) and systemic (indirect) coercion. I argue that this approach steers a middle course between cosmopolitanism and social liberalism without reproducing their difficulties, and provides a principled answer to the question of extension. On this 'coercion view', the applicability of principles of justice to the global arena depends on whether, and if so, how, coercion is exercised beyond state borders.

Political theory, sometimes also called “normative political theory”, is a subfield of the disciplines of philosophy and political science that addresses conceptual, normative, and evaluative questions concerning politics and society, broadly construed. Examples are: When is a society just? What does it mean for its members to be free? When is one distribution of goods socially preferable to another? What makes a political authority legitimate? How should we trade off different values, such as liberty, prosperity, and security, against one another? What do we owe, not just to our fellow citizens, but to people in the world at large? In this article, we review the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory: the one commonly described as “analytic” political theory. In Section 1, we briefly demarcate the scope of political theory. In Section 2, we comment on the analysis of political concepts. In Section 3, we introduce the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts. In Section 4, we discuss the methods of assessing such principles and theories, for the purpose of justifying or criticizing them. In Section 5, we review a recent debate on how abstract and idealized political theory should be. In Section 6, finally, we discuss the significance of disagreement in political theory. Although we cover established ground, we do so from an angle that will be somewhat unfamiliar to at least some political theorists – namely an angle inspired by the philosophy of science. We have chosen this angle with a view to systematizing the activity of analytic political theorizing so as to make its connections with other fields of philosophy and positive science more transparent.

The liberal debate on global justice has long been polarized between cosmopolitans, who champion global equality, and statists, who defend global sufficiency. Interestingly, little attention has been given to what these outlooks have in common: a focus on justice. Justice differs from other types of values in that it sets out rightfully enforceable entitlements. Once this is appreciated, however, cosmopolitanism and statism can be shown to offer inadequate accounts of global justice. Since the principles they advocate are reasonably contested, directly enforcing them on dissenting others would violate the liberal commitment to equal respect for persons. When the demands of justice are reasonably disagreed upon, as they are at the global level, conflicts over them need to be procedurally adjudicated. The chapter concludes that taking the enforceability of justice seriously leads us to advocate global outcome sufficiency, and global procedural equality, thereby steering a middle course between statism and cosmopolitanism.

Although no one denies that there is a duty to address the special needs of the least developed countries, the normative grounds of this duty are subject to on-going debate. While cosmopolitans argue that we should tackle global poverty as part of a broader quest for global justice, social liberals believe that our duties to less fortunate nations are (almost) exclusively a matter of humanitarian assistance. Although much of the debate on global justice turns on the distinction between justice and assistance, surprisingly, neither cosmopolitans nor social liberals offer a systematic account of it. Intuitively, justice is weightier than assistance, but why and to what extent this is the case is something both advocates and critics of global justice fail to explain. In order to fill this gap in the literature, in this paper I consider three accounts of the distinction between justice and assistance: what I call the ‘Agentbased View’, the ‘Recipient-based View’, and the ‘Mixed View’. I show that these views implicitly underpin some of the most prominent liberal outlooks on international morality, and argue that they all prove unsatisfactory. I conclude the paper by offering a fourth alternative, ‘the Revised Agent-based View’ which, I claim, successfully overcomes the difficulties affecting its rivals.

The current theoretical debate on global justice has reached an impasse between two seemingly irreconcilable views. Cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, holds that liberal principles of distributive justice should apply globally. Statism, on the other, argues that only weaker duties of assistance extend beyond state borders. Is there a way out of this impasse? In this paper I argue that there is. I develop a coercion-based approach to justice which provides a general conceptual framework from which cosmopolitanism and statism can be derived as special cases, and systematically assessed. I then argue that both views presuppose implausible accounts of the nature of contemporary global politics and suggest how the debate on global justice could learn from as well as move beyond them.

This article provides a conceptual map of the debate on ideal and non-ideal theory. It argues that this debate encompasses a number of different questions, which have not been kept sufficiently separate in the literature. In particular, the article distinguishes between the following three interpretations of the ‘ideal vs. non-ideal theory’ contrast: (i) full compliance vs. partial compliance theory; (ii) utopian vs. realistic theory; (iii) end-state vs. transitional theory. The article advances critical reflections on each of these sub-debates, and highlights areas for future research in the field.

In his thought-provoking book, Why Law Matters, Alon Harel defends two key claims: one ontological, the other axiological. First, he argues that constitutions and judicial review are necessary constituents of a just society. Second, he suggests that these institutions are not only means to the realization of worthy ends, but also non-instrumentally valuable. I agree with Harel that constitutions and judicial review have more than instrumental value, but I am not persuaded by his arguments in support of this conclusion. I argue that Harel’s ontological claim is unsustainable, and that his axiological claim needs revision. Regarding the former, I show that constitutions and judicial review are only contingent constituents of a just society. Regarding the latter, I contest Harel’s specific account of the value of constitutions and judicial review. Harel grounds the non-instrumental value of constitutions in freedom as non-domination but, upon scrutiny, it emerges that their non-instrumental value lies elsewhere. Further, Harel holds that the non-instrumental value of judicial review stems from its embodying a right to a fair hearing. I argue that this right has non-instrumental value only under a particular set of circumstances. I thus conclude, contrary to Harel, that the non-instrumental value of judicial review is contingent on those circumstances obtaining.

Which standards should we employ to evaluate the global order? Should they be standards of justice or standards of legitimacy? In this article, I argue that liberal political theorists need not face this dilemma, because liberal justice and legitimacy are not distinct values. Rather, they indicate what the same value, i.e. equal respect for persons, demands of institutions under different sets of circumstances. I suggest that under real-world circumstances – characterized by conflicts and disagreements – equal respect demands basic-rights protection and democratic participation, which I here call ‘political justice’. I conclude the article by considering three possible configurations of the global order – the ‘democratic world-state’, ‘independent democratic states’, and ‘mixed’ models – and argue that a commitment to political justice speaks in favour of the latter.

Much contemporary political philosophy claims to be Kant-inspired, but its aims and method differ from Kant's own. In his recent book, Force and Freedom, Arthur Ripstein advocates a more orthodox Kantian outlook, presenting it as superior to dominant (Kant-inspired) views. The most striking feature of this outlook is its attempt to ground the whole of political morality in one right: the right to freedom, understood as the right to be independent of others’ choices. Is Ripstein's Kantian project successful? In this research note I argue that it is not. First, I suggest that Ripstein's notion of freedom is viciously circular. It is meant to ground all rights, but in fact it presupposes an account of those rights. Second, I show that—independently of its inability to ground a whole political morality—such a moralized understanding of freedom is normatively unappealing.

Philosophical discussion of human rights has long been monopolised by what might be called the ‘natural-law view’. On this view, human rights are fundamental moral rights which people enjoy solely by virtue of their humanity. In recent years, a number of theorists have started to question the validity of this outlook, advocating instead what they call a ‘political’ view. My aim in this article is to explore the latter view in order to establish whether it constitutes a valuable alternative to the ‘natural-law view’. In particular, I distinguish between three ways in which human rights can be political: in relation to their (1) iudicandum, (2) justification and (3) feasibility constraints. I argue that it makes sense to think of human rights as political in relation to both their iudicandum and their justification but in a way that is not always adequately captured by proponents of the political view.Moreover, I also claim that, if we take the political view seriously, we still need to engage in the sort of abstract moral reasoning that characterises the natural-law approach and which proponents of the political view significantly downplay.

In his recent book The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen suggests that political philosophy should move beyond the dominant, Rawls-inspired, methodological paradigm – what Sen calls ‘transcendental institutionalism’ – towards a more practically oriented approach to justice: ‘realization-focused comparison’. In this article, I argue that Sen's call for a paradigm shift in thinking about justice is unwarranted. I show that his criticisms of the Rawlsian approach are either based on misunderstandings, or correct but of little consequence, and conclude that the Rawlsian approach already delivers much of what Sen himself wants from a theory of justice.

Observe social distancing. Tip your waiter. Give priority to the elderly. Stop at the red light. Pay your taxes. Do not chew with your mouth open. These are imperatives we face every day, imposed upon us by norms that happen to be generally accepted in our environment. Call these 'socially constructed norms'. A constant presence in our lives, these norms elicit mixed feelings. On the one hand, we treat them as valid standards of behaviour and respond to their violation with emotions such disapproval, resentment, and guilt. On the other hand, we look at them with suspicion: after all, they are arbitrary human constructs that may contribute to oppression and injustice. In light of this ambivalence, it is important to have a criterion telling us when, if ever, we are morally bound by socially constructed norms and when we should instead disregard them. Morality and Socially Constructed Norms systematically develops such a criterion. It traces the moral significance of those norms to the agential commitments that underpin them, and explains why those commitments ought to be respected, provided the content of the corresponding norms is consistent with independent moral constraints. The book then explores the implications of this view for three core questions in moral, legal, and political philosophy: the grounding of moral rights, the obligation to obey the law, and the wrong of sovereignty violations. Morality and Socially Constructed Norms shows how much progress can be made in normative theorizing when we give socially constructed norms their (moral) due.

In his article `Facts and Principles', G.A. Cohen attempts to refute constructivist approaches to justification by showing that, contrary to what their proponents claim, fundamental normative principles are fact-insensitive. We argue that Cohen's `fact-insensitivity thesis' does not provide a successful refutation of constructivism because it pertains to an area of meta-ethics which differs from the one tackled by constructivists. While Cohen's thesis concerns the logical structure of normative principles, constructivists ask how normative principles should be justified. In particular, their claim that justified fundamental normative principles are fact-sensitive follows from a commitment to agnosticism about the existence of objective moral facts. We therefore conclude that, in order to refute constructivism, Cohen would have to address questions of justification, and take a stand on those long-standing meta-ethical debates about the ontological status of moral notions (for example, realism versus anti-realism) with respect to which he himself wants to remain agnostic.

A prominent view in contemporary political theory, the ‘associative view’, says that duties of justice are triggered by particular cooperative relations between morally significant agents, and that ‘therefore’ principles of justice apply only among fellow citizens. This view has been challenged by advocates of global justice, who point to the existence of a worldwide cooperative network to which principles of justice apply. Call this the challenge from geographical extension. In this article, I pose a structurally similar challenge to the associative view: the challenge from species extension. This says that the existing network of cooperation extends beyond the human species, to encompass some non-human animals, particularly domesticated dogs. In light of this, if one believes that (1) certain non-human animals are morally significant (i.e. objects of moral concern), and that (2) justice applies to fellow cooperators, one should also hold that domesticated dogs are owed justice in much the same way that our human fellow citizens are. I conclude by considering the implications of this argument for the associative view, and animal rights theory.