•  122
  •  49
    Can the law help us to be moral?
    Jurisprudence 9 (1): 31-46. 2018.
    The moral value of law can take many forms. It is instrumentally valuable when it coordinates interaction, provides moral advice and leadership, models the virtues, and motivates us to be moral. It is intrinsically valuable when it constitutes the collective moral conscience of citizens, embodies an ideal form of communal life, and expresses the moral integrity of the community. We analyse all of these potential values of law and assess their moral significance. In doing so, we are careful to di…Read more
  •  44
    Global migratory potential and the scope of justice
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 10 (3): 282-300. 2011.
    We live in an era of global migratory potential — a time when a vast number of people have the physical capacity to move relatively quickly and easily between states. In this article, I use this fact to motivate a powerful objection to ‘statism’, the view that the egalitarian principles of justice which apply to citizens have no application outside the boundaries of the state. I argue that, in a world characterized by global migratory potential, the supposed contrast between the normative standi…Read more
  •  26
    The Unilateral Authority Theory of Punishment
    Law and Philosophy 43 (2): 187-213. 2024.
    It is frequently argued that wrongdoers forfeit, through their wrongdoing, their previously held claim rights against being punished. But this is a mistake. Wrongdoers do not forfeit their claim rights against being punished when they violate rights. They forfeit their _immunity_ to having their claim rights against being punished removed. The reason for this, I argue, is that when they violate rights, wrongdoers culpably disregard the authority of right-holders to negotiate the conditions under…Read more
  •  81
    Should we hold nations responsible?
    Res Publica 15 (2): 195-202. 2009.
  •  19
    Statism, Nationalism and the Associative Theory of Special Obligations
    Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 58 (129): 1-18. 2011.
    Statists claim that robust egalitarian distributive norms only apply between the citizens of a common state. Attempts to defend this claim on nationalist grounds often appeal to the 'associative duties' that citizens owe one another in virtue of their shared national identity. In this paper I argue that the appeal to co-national associative duties in order to defend the statist thesis is unsuccessful. I first develop a credible theory of associative duties. I then argue that although the associa…Read more
  •  36
    The global justice gap
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 19 (5): 574-590. 2016.
    The ‘global justice gap’ refers to the state of affairs in which the just entitlements of the global poor do not correlate with the justly enforceable duties of the global rich. The possibility of a global justice gap is controversial, because it is widely thought that claims of justice cannot exist unless they are matched up with corresponding duties. In this essay, I refute this sceptical view by showing that the global justice gap is indeed a theoretical possibility. My strategy is to argue f…Read more