Stephen Nathanson

Do aspiring immigrants have a right to enter a new country? Do countries have a moral duty to allow people seeking refuge to enter? Or do countries have a moral right to deny entry?In this paper, I link these questions to the broader clash between a partialist morality that stresses duties to particular people and an impartialist morality that requires equal treatment of all people. According to strongly partialist views, governments and citizens have duties only to their own country and its citizens and thus no duty to admit aspiring immigrants. According to strongly impartialist views, morality requires impartial concern for all people and thus a duty to admit aspiring immigrants. I focus on the problem of partialism vs. impartialism because solving it is necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) for determining what are the rights of aspiring immigrants and what are the rights and duties of countries that aspiring immigrants seek to enter.One possible solution is provided by “moderate patriotism,” a view that is meant to reconcile partiality and impartiality. According to moderate patriotism, countries have greater duties to their own citizens but also have some duties to non-citizens. Because moderate patriotism can take different forms, it provides multiple answers to questions about immigration. To settle on one answer requires determining which form of moderate patriotism is correct. I describe a few types of moderate patriotism and use a rule utilitarian strategy to determine which type provides the best answers to questions about immigration rights and duties.

Universal Human Rights brings new clarity to the important and highly contested concept of universal human rights. This collection of essays explores the foundations of universal human rights in four sections devoted to their nature, application, enforcement, and limits, concluding that shared rights help to constitute a universal human community, which supports local customs and separate state sovereignty. The eleven contributors to this volume demonstrate from their very different perspectives how human rights can help to bring moral order to an otherwise divided world

The primary thesis of Terrorism and the Ethics of War is that terrorist acts are always wrong. I begin this paper by describing two views that I criticize in the book The first condemns all terrorism but applies the term in a biased way; the second defends some terrorist acts. I then respond to issues raised by the commentators. I discuss Joan McGregor’s concerns about the definition of terrorism and about how terrorism differs from other forms of violence againstinnocent people. I respond to Sally Scholz’s challenges to my interpretation of innocence. She argues that soldiers can be innocent victims of terrorism and that both relationships and vulnerability are important to understanding innocence. Matthew Silliman questions my defense of utilitarianism and challenges two views that I defend: that all terrorist acts are wrong and that war can sometimes be right. I sketch brief responses to these important points.

Nathanson asks how we can properly understand terrorism such that it is (a) always unjustified, and (b) does not thereby preclude justified warfare. By means of a novel ruleutilitarian argument bolstering the inviolability of noncombatants, he hopes to have crafted such an understanding. While praising Nathanson’s rigor and originality, this paper questions the moral-theoretic completeness of his procedure, and then raises challenges from two directions: (1) an argument for the justifiability of terrorism in certain circumstances, and (2) an argument against the justifiability of warfare under any circumstances. The first challenge can probably be met by the argumentative resources of the book; it is possible that the second cannot, though perhaps it unfairly asks the author to go beyond the scope of the project.