The thesis is an attempt to find a satisfactorv grounding for universal moral rights. It attempts to ground universal moral rights in a revised version of the framework of moral reasons offered by T.M. Scanlon in What We Owe to Each Oflzer. In doing so it takes on several related projects. It makes a case for why rights generally, and universal rights in particular, are an essential part of a proper moral theory. It then attempts an extended argument in support of why the method of grounding universal rights at which I eventuallv arrive is superior to competitors. The argument encompasses both why I believe that universal rights need to be grounded in an objective meta-ethcs, and why I take the sort of irrealist cognitivism advanced by Scanlon to be the most promising form of moral objectivism. The argument is admittedly defeasible: it is not so ambitious as to try to eliminate every competing rights theory, but it purports to be strong enough to show that my theory enjoys significant adivantages over manv others. In the course of making this argument I align myself with the natural law tradition, and claim that mv position is best understood as a new natural law theory. The thesis goes on to defend many elements of the Scanlonian picture of moral reasons, but also to revise that picture in important ways, particularly by arguing that Scanlon’s contractualism is best understood to be underpinned bv an account of the sacred offered by Ronald Dworkin, and that some moral reasons are reasons we all share. The final chapter of the thesis shows how rights are derived from Scanlonian reasons, and particularly how universal rights are derived from shared reasons.

Proponents of moral particularism have often sought support for their negative claim about moral principles in a doctrine called holism in the theory of reasons. According to holism, a feature that is a reason in one case may be no reason at all, or even the opposite reason, in another. The aim of this thesis is to investigate and elucidate the supposed connection between holism and particularism. This is done by considering the particularistic position embraced by Jonathan Dancy in his book Ethics without Principles and the arguments against the argument from holism recently put forth by Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge in their book Principled Ethics: generalism as a regulative ideal. In conclusion it is argued that holism does provide at least some support for the form of particularism which Dancy defends.

This thesis is about the legitimacy of political authority in general and international legal institutions (ILIs) in particular. It is divided into two parts with three chapters corresponding to each part. The first part presents an account of legitimate political authority that is based on Joseph Raz's service conception of authority but also makes some important modifications to it. The central claim of the first part is that the legitimacy of political authorities in general, as measured by the standard of Raz's Normal Justification Thesis, depends in a crucial way on the ability of the subjects to get involved –more so than Raz is prepared to admit– in the activities that are relevant in the political domain. The thesis offers a general account of legitimate political authority, i.e. one that is valid for any type of political authority. The second part, however, examines the implications of this account for the legitimacy of ILIs. These are non-state authorities, such as the World Trade Organisation or the International Criminal Court, that deal with problems of global political relevance. Because of this global approach, the subjects of ILIs (i.e. those whose reasons are to be served by the ILI) are not confined to the boundaries of regions or states, but distributed across the world. ILIs operate by creating, interpreting, and applying public international law. Despite some striking differences between ILIs and other types of political authority (particularly states), I argue that they all ought to be measured by the same standard of legitimacy, namely the Normal Justification Thesis. But I also argue that the requirements for meeting this standard of legitimacy may vary according to the type of political authority (especially with regard to the requirement of democracy).