Global Justice Essay Plan

Basic Conclusion: No you do not owe more to members of your own political community
than you do to other human beings

Paragraph 1: Discuss social liberalist position:

- Set out Rawls view (laid out by Caney 2005) about distributional justice holding
within states because they are self contained structures
- However argue that this distinction is no longer effective due to globalisation and
growing interdependence
- Move on to argue why brute luck as to nationality, particularly given that nation
boundaries are often arbitrary, or at worst unjust and we also cannot ask people to
simply move states as this is often hard

Paragraph 2: Veil of ignorance

- Use veil of ignorance to show why it is likely that people would choose principles of
global justice
- Use Pogge (2002) to show why it is difficult to hold that we should have just
institutions at a national but not international level as you have to hold that there is
a meaningful difference between people of different nationalities particularly as it is
based on brute luck

Paragraph 3: Global economic order

- Argue that it is difficult to hold that the current global economic order is just as it
allows an extremely dangerous level of death and poverty, and is imposed by rich
countries more than poor (G8, Security Council, IMF, World Bank etc)
- Surely there should be some account of economic rights that work like human rights
to stop the life threatening poverty that is imposed by the global economic order

Paragraph 4: Recognise that complete cosmopolitan redistribution is impossible

- It is impossibly demanding as it doesnt recognise the impossibility of holding there is
no difference between acts and ommissions
- Here a difference between positive and negative obligations arise which may give
rise to a claim that there is a slight difference between people of your own
community (i.e. domestic poverty is directly related to the actions of you as a
member of that political community, but less so internationally) however drawing on
elements of Pogges argument set out in paragraphs 2&3 that as states do cause the
unlevel playing field, this argument does not hold as much weight as it initially seems
to