Society and global justice in Rawls's 'The Law of Peoples' (John Rawls)

This dissertation traces the development of Rawls' theory from the domestic context to the international. There are two principal differences in the way that Rawls constructs his theory at these two levels. First, at the domestic level, Rawls models all relevant social positions in the original position, including that of society's least advantaged. At the international level, Rawls begins with liberal peoples to the exclusion of other communities and their interests. Second, the veil of ignorance at the international level is considerably more transparent. At the domestic level, Rawls places parties behind a thick veil of ignorance that deprives them of any self knowledge. At the international level, parties representing liberal peoples know that they represent liberal peoples. This means that liberal peoples know that their societies are based upon a liberal conception of justice. It means, additionally, that these parties know that their societies possess at least a minimal level of wealth necessary for the establishment of liberal political institutions. Because of these differences, the Law of Peoples is international justice from the perspective of the privileged.; These differences arise from differences between Rawls's preconditions for a conception of justice and his view that these prerequisites do not exist at the global level. Rawls conditions the need for principles of justice on the existence of a scheme of social cooperation in which the circumstances of justice (including relative scarcity and divergent conceptions of the good) exist. In his brief early discussion of international justice, Rawls cites Brierly with approval. Brierly's account relies on Hobbesian conception of the international system is a state of nature. Rawls's implicit rejection of the existence of an international society underlies the discontinuities outlined above. I reject this contention. Globalization has rendered any illusion of autarky obsolete. International society is marked by the same circumstances of justice that we find domestically. I develop an inclusive international original position in which all relevant social positions are modeled and in which parties choose principles from behind a thick veil of ignorance that deprives them of knowledge about whom they represent.