The rise of Trumpism and the Covid-19 pandemic have galvanized debates about globalization. Eric D. Larson presents a timely look at the last time the concept spurred unruly agitation: the late twentieth century. Offering a transnational history of the emergence of the global justice movement in the United States and Mexico, he considers how popular organizations laid the foundations for this “movement of movements.” Farmers, urban workers, and Indigenous peoples grounded their efforts to confront free-market reforms in frontline struggles for economic and racial justice. As they strove to change the direction of the world economy, they often navigated undercurrents of racism, nationalism, and neoliberal multiculturalism, both within and beyond their networks. Larson traces the histories of three popular organizations, examining the Mexican roots of the idea of food sovereignty; racism and whiteness at the momentous Battle of Seattle protests outside the 1999 World Trade Organization meetings; and the rise of dramatic street demonstrations around the globe. Juxtaposing these stories, he reinterprets some of the crucial moments, messages, and movements of the era.

In 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which declared that every human being, without “distinction of any kind,” possesses a set of morally authoritative rights and fundamental freedoms that ought to be socially guaranteed. Since that time, human rights have arguably become the cross-cultural moral concept and evaluative tool to measure the performance—and even legitimacy—of domestic regimes. Yet questions remain that challenge their universal validity and theoretical bases. Some theorists are ”maximalist” in their insistence that human rights must be grounded religiously, while an opposing camp attempts to justify these rights in “minimalist” fashion without any necessary recourse to religion, metaphysics, or essentialism. In Grounding Human Rights in a Pluralist World, Grace Kao critically examines the strengths and weaknesses of these contending interpretations while also exploring the political liberalism of John Rawls and the Capability Approach as proposed by economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum. By retrieving insights from a variety of approaches, Kao defends an account of human rights that straddles the minimalist–maximalist divide, one that links human rights to a conception of our common humanity and to the notion that ethical realism gives the most satisfying account of our commitment to the equal moral worth of all human beings.

Why should states matter and how do relations between fellow-citizens affect what is owed to distant strangers? How, if at all, can demanding egalitarian principles inform political action in the real world? This book proposes a novel solution through the concept of avant-garde political agency. Ypi grounds egalitarian principles on claims arising from conflicts over the distribution of global positional goods, and illustrates the role of avant-garde agents in shaping these conflicts and promoting democratic political transformations in response to them. Against statists, she defends the global scope of equality, and derives remedial cosmopolitan principles from global responsibilities to relieve absolute deprivation. Against cosmopolitans, she shows that associative political relations play an essential role and that blanket condemnation of the state is unnecessary and ill-directed. Advocating an approach to global justice whereby domestic avant-garde agents intervene politically so as to constrain and motivate fellow-citizens to support cosmopolitan transformations, this book offers a fresh and nuanced example of political theory in an activist mode. Setting the contemporary debate on global justice in the context of recent methodological disputes on the relationship between ideal and nonideal theorizing, Ypi's dialectical account illustrates how principles and agency can genuinely interact.

The first volume to explore the role of race and empire in political theory debates over global justice.

In a world beset by serious and unconscionable health disparities, by dangerous contagions that can circle our globalized planet in hours, and by a bewildering confusion of health actors and systems, humankind needs a new vision, a new architecture, new coordination among renewed systems to ensure central health capabilities for all. Global Health Justice and Governance lays out the critical problems facing the world today and offers a new theory of justice and governance as a way to resolve these seemingly intractable issues. A fundamental responsibility of society is to ensure human flourishing. The central role that health plays in flourishing places a unique claim on our public institutions and resources, to ensure central health capabilities to reduce premature death and avoid preventable morbidities. Faced with staggering inequalities, imperiling epidemics, and inadequate systems, the world desperately needs a new global health architecture. Global Health Justice and Governance lays out this vision.

Although we have obligations to address global problems at a political level, we disagree on the source, justification, and content of these norms. For example, what kinds of obligations exist across national borders and why? What international actions are right and wrong? Who is required to perform these actions? When it is it permissible to use coercion at the global level? In my dissertation, I develop an original theory of global justice that can answer these questions and I show how my theory applies to current problems. I start by articulating why we need a theory of international justice and introducing the theories that have already been proposed. I divide these theories into two general kinds. One theory says global political norms are rooted in objective facts about what is good for human beings. In this view, human beings have certain needs and desires, and so some ways of treating humans are forbidden (for example, harming others) and others are obligatory (such as helping others). The other theory says that international norms are the product of some contract or agreement. I call the former non-constructivism and the latter social contract theory. I then explain why neither of these two kinds of theories adequately describes or justifies international norms. Due to what I call the choice and specification problems, I argue that there are many ways to attain the goods we pursue in international relations, none of which is privileged, and that there are too many ways to specify norms, none of which is privileged. Next, due to what I call the constraint problem, I also argue that social contract theory is insufficient to ground a theory of global justice. Parties to contracts may agree to seemingly incorrect agreements or fail to agree to seemingly required contracts. Despite being insufficient by themselves to ground global justice, I argue that these theories are also necessary. I affirm the existence of objective facts and endorse their contribution to global justice. I also appeal to respect for rational agents, success in consensus, and practical considerations in showing social contract theory is necessary for global justice. In addition to the independent reasons necessitating these theories, we also have reason to include them in a theory of global justice insofar as they complete each other. I argue that social contract theory best solves the choice and specification problems and that non-constructivism best solves the constraint problem. Having found that both theories are individually necessary and jointly sufficient, I argue that a combination of the two succeeds. I defend such a combination--a hybrid theory--in two stages. In the first stage, I argue hybrid theory is possible and that it avoids the defects of each component without incurring any fresh difficulties. After defending hybrid theory generally, I proceed to a second stage of this defense, in which I develop a particular version of hybrid theory. I first seek a particular version of hybrid theory in history, considering Epicurus, Grotius, and Hobbes. I evaluate each hybrid theory, drawing out their strengths and weaknesses. However, I ultimately argue that none provides a successful theory of global justice. Next, I articulate and defend a particular version of hybrid theory that inherits the benefits of my predecessors. In my theory, something can be called a norm for international justice if and only if it pursues universal goods and promotes cooperation through consent, thereby avoiding the problems that beset other theories of global justice. I defend individuals as parties to the contract, while allowing for representatives in select cases. I also defend tacit consent as the most successful version of consent to global contracts. Because this particular hybrid theory raises the bar for global justice considerably, I also consider methods to evaluate global actors, actions, and norms that fall short of my criteria. Next, I show how my particular hybrid theory of international justice can help us find answers to problems raised by certain kinds of financial crimes, and the global response to those crimes, what is called, "anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism" (AML/CFT). These measures are nonviolent responses to terrorism and thus essential elements of broader efforts to end terrorism. Despite their successes, I argue that the current institutions are lacking, and that my theory offers possible solutions to those problems. For example, there seems to be no significant theoretical distinction between measures which are enforced universally without consent on the one hand, and ones which are enforced selectively against those countries who have agreed to it. This conduct runs the risk of losing legitimacy for those solutions to international problems that begin with the readiest support. By creating an explicit distinction between practices that require agreement and practices that do not, according to my hybrid view, current international legal institutions could benefit from transparency, legitimacy, theoretical grounding, and consistency while avoiding arguments or justifications grounded in might makes right for law enforcement, violations of sovereignty, and arbitrariness.

Presents an analysis of what justice is, the transcendental theory of justice and its drawbacks, and a persuasive argument for a comparative perspective on justice that can guide us in the choice between alternatives.