Traditional theories of domestic distributive justice take two claims for granted. (1) State territorial borders place legitimate limits on the scope of obligations of distributive justice, i.e., there is an obligation to distribute goods within our territory but not beyond our territory. (2) States have a need for and a legitimate claim to exclusive territorial jurisdiction. Given increasing globalization and the recent prominence of international theories of distributive justice, it is now obvious that these two claims cannot be taken for granted. Theories of distributive justice must explain how and why state borders affect distributive obligations.In this dissertation I argue that state borders serve fundamental values in a liberal theory of justice. As such, state borders are morally relevant to a theory of justice. I argue for a Lockean theory of territory; state territory is justified because it serves four fundamental Lockean values of need, efficiency, the labor theory of desert, and self-determination. State borders mark the boundaries of a state's autonomous territory. State territory, and the borders that mark the boundaries of that territory, are valuable in a liberal theory of justice. This conclusion has implications for the answer to the question: what is owed to foreigners? The fundamental values served by the state's right to territory also support the state's right to control the natural resources within its territory and the state's right to control benefits that flow from the resources within the territory. This means that the state has a right to distribute the benefits from the resources within its territory and (to some degree) to exclude foreigners from these benefits.

This thesis is intended as a critique of Will Kymlicka’s groundbreaking and elegant defense of a liberal theory of minority rights. It argues that although Kymlicka has succeeded in showing that a minority nation may seek and exercise minority rights while still respecting, and even furthering, the ability of its members to live autonomously, Kymlicka is mistaken when he contends that liberalism’s commitment to individual autonomy requires the liberal democratic state to provide minority nations with the self-government and language rights necessary to allow them to sustain their “societal cultures.” Specifically, it is argued that Kymlicka’s autonomy-based argument for according self-government and language rights to national minorities fails to pay sufficient regard to both the fact that the personal costs associated with leaving one’s culture will vary depending on the individual and the cultures involved, and the fact that some national minorities, in order to sustain themselves as distinct societal cultures, will require not only external protections from the actions of the cultural majority, but also the ability to impose liberty-infringing preservationist measures against their own members. Further, since, as I argue, individual autonomy does not actually require that one has continued access to one’s societal culture, it is suggested that both granting and refusing a minority nation the means to sustain its societal culture could be in keeping with a liberal conception of justice, depending on the particular circumstances of the groups at issue. Consequently, the thesis concludes that the question of how to accommodate national minorities should be determined on a case-by-case basis. / Thesis (Master, Law) -- Queen's University, 2009-09-21 13:10:41.185

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The apparent dichotomy between public and private morality and the problem of justifying 'raison d'etat' has been a constant problem in political philosophy since the publication of Machiavelli's 'II Principe'. In this thesis the conflict between personal morality and the demands of public office are examined in the light of the ethical and political systems of Hobbes, Locke, Bentham, Kant and Bosanquet all of which to a greater or lesser extent fail not only to answer the questions raised but to provide a comprehensive justification of the grounds for ethical conduct. It is contended here that the morality of self perfection, coupled with the acceptance of the notion of Natural Law as a yardstick against which both legislation and executive acts of public officials can be judged, does provide a unifying moral principle capable of bridging the gap between political action and private conscience. Statesmen, politicians and public officials cannot shirk the hard decisions that often go with public office but if they recognise a wrongful act for what it is and subscribe to a morality which includes an ethic of character then the chances of their being corrupted are greatly reduced.

Bibliography: p.191-197. / This dissertation adopts as its starting point the beliefs that moral truths can be known and that political philosophy is a branch of ethics. The author identifies three variants of libertarianism on the basis of their different treatments of the right to private property, which all three consider to be the cornerstone of political libertarianism. The author evaluates the arguments of Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, John Hospers and Ayn Rand for the moral foundations of libertarianism and finds them to be methodologically inadequate. None is able to furnish libertarianism with the moral foundations it requires. Following the example of Jan Narveson in his recent defence of the libertarian idea, the author adopts as the correct metaphysic of morality the method of hypothetical contract. The contractarian method is capable of determining both the nature and the extent of moral obligation. From application of the method of hypothetical contract, the author concurs with the above-mentioned authors that morality is a system of rights and duties, i.e. deontological in character, and that persons are indeed bearers of moral, non-conventional rights. One of these rights is the negative right to equal social liberty. The author differs, however, in finding that contractarianism favours also a positive right to basic, standard welfare. Recognition of this latter right commits the author to a form of moderate or Lockean libertarianism that endorses the in-principle justice of coercive redistribution to meet persons' basic welfare. Consequently, the orthodox libertarianism advocated by Nozick, Rothbard, Hospers, Rand and Narveson which recognises only negative moral rights is rejected by the author. All of the libertarians cited accept in one form or another John Locke's labour theory of appropriation. However, the author eschews the standard reading of Locke they are wedded to. The standard reading premises the labour theory on a person's ownership of himself. This reading is rejected on the grounds that the idea of self-ownership is insufficiently determinate to act as a sure basis for establishing property rights in things one has mixed one's labour with. A reconstructed defence of the moral right to private property through labouring which avoids this difficulty is given. That defence is premised not on self-ownership but on the right to equal social liberty. Save for the requirement to meet basic welfare there are no limits to the extent of acquisition. The author argues that, despite his avowals to the contrary, Nozick in fact endorses a positive right to welfare, and that this positive right is one that is co-extensive with the right to basic welfare established by the method of hypothetical contract. Two arguments are given. The first argument draws on Nozick's Lockean proviso that an act of appropriation not worsen the position of others. The second is based upon the application to an envisaged society of libertarian-rights bearers of Nozick's clause that permits the violation of rights in order to avoid catastrophic moral horror. This latter argument the author believes to be successful against any libertarianism that is wedded to absolute property rights. Redistribution to meet the demands of basic welfare necessitates taxation. Taxation is to be levied proportionately and not progressively, and is to be coupled with a system of private social insurance. None of the three variants of libertarianism identified, and which the author maintains sustain redistribution as a matter of justice, is ostensibly committed to redistribution more extensive than required to meet persons' basic welfare~ Ernest Loevinsohn's argument to the effect that libertarians are - by the very principle they defend as libertarians - committed to more far-reaching welfare and redistribution is examined and rejected. Because Loevinsohn's argument is directed against a consequentialist defence of libertarianism and not a deontological version it is misplaced. Furthermore, it fails to establish the conclusion Loevinsohn supposes it.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The dissertation investigates our moral obligations in the face of injustice. Contemporary political philosophers have largely neglected this issue, focusing instead on what they call the "problem of political obligation"; that is, whether subjects of just and nearly just societies have a moral duty to obey the law because it is the law. Philosophers fail to consider the obligations of citizens in polities with significant and pervasive injustice. They sometimes recognize that civil disobedience may be morally justified, but they never consider the possibility that it might be morally required. This failure to consider the possibility that one may have a duty to disobey unjust laws and resist injustice is surprising given that the paragons of civil disobedience-to wit, Henry D. Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.-treated resistance to injustice as a matter of moral obligation. The dissertation shifts attention away from the orthodox question, Is there a moral duty to obey the law?, towards the morally urgent question, When is one morally required to disobey the law? Chapter 1 examines the literature on political obligation and civil disobedience, and elaborates on the dissertation's project and motivation. To inquire into citizens' obligations in the face of injustice, the dissertation employs the normative principles commonly used to ground a moral duty to obey the law. Chapters 2-5 are each devoted to one standard ground of political obligation, namely: the principle of fairness, the natural duty of justice, the Samaritan duty, and associative duties. Each chapter clarifies the normative principle under consideration, and develops an account of the duty to resist injustice and disobey the law based on that principle. Chapter 6 summarizes the resulting "multiple principle" theory of obligations in the face of injustice, and complements it with an account of second-order duties focused on overcoming obstacles to the perception of injustice and recognition of one's responsibilities. / 2031-01-01

The non-identity problem attempts to explain the moral permissibility of certain procreative acts that determine a future individual’s existence. If we accept that this individual’s life is worth living, than we must also accept that these procreative acts are permissible. However, this is not the case. In this paper, I will argue against the permissibility of these acts and explain why our intuition, that these acts are morally wrong, is in fact correct. Because the non-identity problem affects particular persons, those whose existence is brought about, I argue in favor of a solution that explains that moral impermissibility in terms of the wrong done to this particular person. I do so by demonstrating why solutions offered by Derek Parfit, Elizabeth Harman, and Justin McBrayer have failed, whereas solutions offered by James Woodward and Gregory Kavka successfully explain moral impermissibility of non-identity acts in terms of wronging future individuals.