Suchergebnisse

Advocates of restricted immigration usually make an exception for refugees who are described as having special claims to admission on humanitarian grounds. This chapter raises doubts about the plausibility of the distinction between refugees and economic or other non-humanitarian migrants. It argues that the distinction is difficult to draw conceptually and that the institutions designed to serve the interests of refugees in fact aim to limit their capacity to move despite claims that they are intended to serve refugee interests. The chapter also argues that if we want to serve the interests of those who have claims on our help and hospitality we need to devise very different institutional arrangements.

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions as truth is of systems ofthought. So John Rawls famously proclaimed in the beginning of hismasterwork, A Theory of Justice. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if untrue. Laws and institutions no matterhow efficient and well arranged must be reformed or abolished if unjust.Justice, perhaps unlike some other values, was not something we mightreadily trade a little of in exchange for other benefits.1In his critique ofRawls, Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen proposes to take justicemore seriously while at the same time conceding that justice might justifiably be traded off against other goods.2 His objection to Rawls is that hehas, without warrant, presented justice as quite compatible with extensive social inequality when inequalities serve to improve the condition ofthe worst off or least advantaged in society. If a departure from equality is what is necessary to improve the condition of the least fortunatethen departing from equality may have to be countenanced; but such adeparture is unjust. If Rawls truly takes justice to be as important as heproclaims, he must not present justice as a notion whose meaning mustbe revised to take into account the feasibility of sustaining some kinds ofsocial institutions. In particular, he must not build into the conceptionof justice he defends the idea that very unequal rewards for the talentedare just when they induce them to produce more – even if this is to thebenefit of all.

Against scepticism from thinkers including John Rawls and Thomas Nagel about the appropriateness of justice as the concept through which global ethical concerns should be approached, Amartya Sen argues that the problem lies not with the idea of justice, but with a particular approach to thinking of justice, namely a transcendental approach. In its stead Sen is determined to offer an alternative systematic theory of justice, namely a comparative approach, as a more promising foundation for a theory of 'global justice.' But in the end Sen offers no such thing. He does not develop a theory of justice and this is all to the good; for if values are plural in the way Sen suggests, then justice is not a master idea but one value among many, and it should be neither the first virtue of social institutions, nor the notion that frames all our reflections on ethical and political life.

"The framework for utopia," Robert Nozick tells us at the beginning of the fi nal section of Part iiiof Anarchy, State, and Utopia( ASU), "is equivalent to the minimal state" (p. 333). The rich andcomplex body of argumentation of Parts iand iihad produced theconclusion that the minimal, and no more than a minimal, statewas legitimate or morally justifi ed. What Part iiireveals is that theminimal state "is the one that best realizes the utopian aspirationsof untold dreamers and visionaries" (p. 333). Although this happyconvergence is surely no accident, neither, Nozick insists, is it contrived, for it is the conclusion reached by two independent lines ofargument. If there is a framework for utopia – or, as I shall from nowsimply say, utopia – it is the minimal state.

Although some of this will be familiar to a number of you all,I will talk a bit about Friedrich A. Hayek since I am goingfirst. I'll say a little bit about his life, how he came to theideas that he became so famous for espousing, and then a little bitabout his liberalism and the contribution he has made to liberaltheory and to intellectual life.

Every day, large numbers of people cross borders that separate one political jurisdiction from another. Most do so legally, though many break the law in changing jurisdictions. Many more do not cross borders, because they dare not break the law or cannot cross undetected-sometimes because they are denied permission to leave one jurisdiction, and other times because they are prohibited from entering another. Some cross borders fully aware that they are leaving one defined space and entering another, while others have no idea that anything has changed or that the imaginary lines that define distinct regions exist even in the imagination. Borders-political boundaries-are such variable things that encounters with them can be very different experiences. Entering Luxemburg from Belgium is almost always a nonevent. Entering the United States from Mexico can be very eventful. The purpose of this essay to ask why this is so, and whether it must be so. Why must some borders be so difficult to cross? Why can't the move from Mexico to the United States always be as easy as moving from Belgium to Luxemburg? Why should some people be able to move so freely and others not? Another way to put this is to ask: Why can't all borders be open? The point of this essay is to address this question, both as a conceptual question and as a theoretical-normative-question. Its concern is the movement of people-not of goods or money-across political boundaries. In the end, it tries to offer a defense of open borders. But any such defense must rest on some account of what "open borders" means, and how such a thing is possible. Thus the aim of the essay is to offer an account of the theory and practice of open borders.

AbstractPhilip Pettit and Quentin Skinner find Hobbes's understanding of freedom as non-interference inadequate because it fails to appreciate what is wrong with a life lived as a slave. Though their critiques have some force, however, Hobbes's view of freedom has virtues of its own. It is highly sensitive to the fact that freedom is a matter of degree. It is also unlikely to mistake freedom for something else, like security or dignity. Moreover, Hobbes is not as unmindful of the dangers of servility as many think.

Most modern states today are, at least to some degree, culturally diverse.Trade, tourism, international dialogue among scholars, scientists, and artists,and the movement of skilled labor—as well as migration—have ensured thatfew countries do not contain within them significant numbers of people fromalien cultures. The one cultural minority found almost everywhere is the international frequent flyer. Many societies today are multicultural because theyare open to a diversity of peoples who come and go and, sometimes, stay.