Rectifying International Injustice: Principles of Compensation and Restitution Between Nations

Daniel Butt

2008년 11월 · OUP Oxford

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The history of international relations is characterized by widespread injustice. What implications does this have for those living in the present? Many writers have dismissed the moral urgency of rectificatory justice in a domestic context, as a result of their forward-looking accounts of distributive justice. Rectifying International Injustice argues that historical international injustice raises a series of distinct theoretical problems, as a result of the popularity of backward-looking accounts of distributive justice in an international context. It lays out three morally relevant forms of connection with the past, based in ideas of benefit, entitlement and responsibility. Those living in the present may have obligations to pay compensation to those in other states insofar as they are benefiting, and others are suffering, as a result of the effects of historic injustice. They may be in possession of property which does not rightly belong to them, but to which others have inherited entitlements. Finally, they may be members of political communities which bear collective responsibility for an ongoing failure to rectify historic injustice. Rectifying International Injustice considers each of these three linkages with the past in detail. It examines the complicated relationship between rectificatory justice and distributive justice, and argues that many of those who resist cosmopolitan demands for the global redistribution of resources have failed to appreciate the extent to which past wrongdoing undermines the legitimacy of contemporary resource holdings.

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Daniel Butt was appointed Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Oriel College, Oxford in 2004. He studied Politics at undergraduate and graduate level at Wadham College, Oxford, prior to a three year appointment as Research Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford between 2001 and 2004. He is a member of the Centre for the Study of Social Justice, and Director of the Programme on Courts and the Making of Public Policy for the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society. Rectifying International Injustice is the culmination of eight years of research on the question of international rectificatory justice.