•  10
    Justice as Luck Egalitarian Fairness?
    Dialogue 58 (4): 741-750. 2019.
    Kyle Johannsen soutient que, pour être pleinement convaincante, la théorie de la justice de John Rawls doit incorporer la conception de l’équité associée avec l’égalitarisme des chances de G.A. Cohen. Il maintient également que, lorsqu’on modifie ainsi la théorie de Rawls, on voit que les principes choisis dans la position originelle doivent être ce que Cohen appelle des «règles de régulation». Je rétorque que la conception de l’équité qu’adopte Rawls est idéalement adaptée aux besoins de sa thé…Read more
  •  34
    A Problem for Global Egalitarianism
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 15 (2): 182-212. 2018.
    Do the demands of egalitarian justice extend to the international realm? Some believe that a positive answer follows from a simple line of reasoning: where a child happens to be born is a morally arbitrary fact; accordingly, it shouldn’t unduly influence her life prospects, as will inevitably be the case unless economic inequalities between countries are ironed out. I argue that this style of argument overlooks an important problem concerning the extent to which a person can unilaterally impose …Read more
  •  54
    Cohen’s community: Beyond the liberal state?
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 17 (1): 23-50. 2018.
    Does the kind of socialist ideal articulated by G. A. Cohen in Why Not Socialism? add anything substantial to the Rawlsian conception of justice? Is it an ideal that Rawlsians should want to take on board, or is it ultimately foreign to their outlook? I defend a mixed answer to these questions. On the one hand, we shouldn’t underestimate the extent to which Rawls's theory already addresses the concerns that motivate Cohen’s appeal to the socialist ideal. Within the bounds of a society living up …Read more
  •  158
    Kant on Property Rights and the State
    Kantian Review 15 (1): 57-87. 2010.
    The central claim of Kant's political philosophy is that rational agents sharing a territory can justifiably be forced to live under a state; they have, in Kant's words, a duty of right to leave the state of nature. Perhaps something along these lines is entailed by any theory of state legitimacy, but the point raises special difficulties for Kant. He believes that rational agents have a right to freedom; that is, he believes that a rational agent's external freedom - her ability to set and purs…Read more
  •  115
    Why the Basic Structure?
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 42 (3-4): 303-334. 2012.
    John Rawls famously holds that the basic structure is the 'primary subject of justice.'1 By this, he means that his two principles of justice apply only to a society's major political and social institutions, including chiefly the constitution, the economic and legal systems, and (more contentiously) the family structure.2 This thesis — call it the basic structure restriction — entails that the celebrated difference principle has a narrower scope than one might have expected. It doesn't apply di…Read more
  •  13
    Motivations stratégiques et compétition fiscale
    Philosophiques 43 (1): 119-125. 2016.
    Hodgson, Louis-Philippe
  •  46
    Collective Action and Contract Rights
    Legal Theory 17 (3): 209-26. 2011.
    The possibility of collective action is essential to human freedom. Yet, as Rousseau famously argued, individuals acting together allow themselves to depend on one another’s choices and thereby jeopardize one another’s freedom. These two facts jointly constitute what I call the normative problem of collective action. I argue that solving this problem is harder than it looks. It cannot be done merely in terms of moral obligations; indeed, it ultimately requires putting in place a full-fle…Read more