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This paper documents that resource reallocation across firms is an important mechanism through which creditor rights affect real outcomes. I exploit the staggered adoption of an international convention that provides globally consistent strong creditor protection for aircraft finance. After this reform, country-level productivity in the aviation sector increases by 12%, driven mostly by across-firm reallocation. Productive airlines borrow more, expand, and adopt new technology at the expense of unproductive ones. Such reallocation is facilitated by (i) easier and quicker asset redeployment; and (ii) the influx of foreign financiers offering innovative financial products to improve credit allocative efficiency. I further document an increase in competition and an improvement in the breadth and the quality of products available to consumers.
In times of crisis, governments have strong incentives to influence banks’ credit allocation because the survival of the economy depends on it. How do governments make banks “play along”? This paper focuses on the state-guaranteed credit programs (SGCPs) that have been implemented in Europe to help firms survive the COVID 19 crisis. Governments’ capacity to save the economy depends on banks’ capacity to grant credit to struggling firms (which they would not be inclined to do spontaneously in the context of a global pandemic). All governments thus face the same challenge: How do they make sure that state guaranteed loans reach their desired target and on what terms? Based on a comparative analysis of the elaboration and implementation of SGCPs in France and Germany, this paper shows that historically-rooted institutionalized modes of coordination between state and bank actors have largely shaped the terms of the SGCPs in these two countries.
An important question in banking is how strict supervision affects bank lending and in turn local business activity. Supervisors forcing banks to recognize losses could choke off lending and amplify local economic woes. But stricter supervision could also change how banks assess and manage loans. Estimating such effects is challenging. We exploit the extinction of the thrift regulator (OTS) to analyze economic links between strict supervision, bank lending and business activity. We first show that the OTS replacement indeed resulted in stricter supervision of former OTS banks. Next, we analyze the ensuing lending effects. We show that former OTS banks increase small business lending by roughly 10 percent. This increase is concentrated in well-capitalized banks, those more affected by the new regime, and cannot be fully explained by a reallocation from mortgage to small business lending after the crisis. These findings suggest that stricter supervision operates not only through capital but can also correct deficiencies in bank management and lending practices, leading to more lending and a reallocation of loans.
n today’s world, the transfer of laws and regulations between different legal systems is commonplace. The global spread of stewardship codes in recent years presents a promising, but yet untested, terrain to explore the diffusion of such norms. This paper aims to fill this gap. Employing the method of content analysis and using information from 41 stewardship codes enacted between 1991 and 2019, we systematically examine the formal diffusion of these stewardship codes. While we find support for the diffusion story of the UK as a stewardship norm exporter, especially in former British colonies in Asia, we also find evidence of diffusion from transnational initiatives, such as the EFAMA and ICGN codes, as well as regional clusters. We also show that the UK Stewardship Code of 2020 now deviates from these current models; thus, it remains to be seen how far a second round of exportation of the revised UK model into the transnational arena will follow.
When parties present divergent econometric evidence, the court may view such evidence as contradictory and thus ignore it completely, without conducting closer analysis. We develop a simple method for distinguishing between actual and merely apparent contradiction based on the statistical concept of the “severity” of the furnished evidence. Again using “severity”, we also propose a method for reconciling divergent findings in instances of mere seeming contradiction. Our chosen application is that of damage estimation in follow-on cases.
This paper contributes to the debate on the adequate regulatory treatment of non-bank financial intermediation (NBFI). It proposes an avenue for regulators to keep regulatory arbitrage under control and preserve sufficient space for efficient financial innovation at the same time. We argue for a normative approach to supervision that can overcome the proverbial race between hare and hedgehog in financial regulation and demonstrate how such an approach can be implemented in practice. We first show that regulators should primarily analyse the allocation of tail risk inherent in NBFI. Our paper proposes to apply regulatory burdens equivalent to prudential banking regulation if the respective transactional structures become only viable through indirect or direct access to (ad hoc) public backstops. Second, we use insights from the scholarship on regulatory networks as communities of interpretation to demonstrate how regulators can retrieve the information on transactional innovations and their risk-allocating characteristics that they need to make the pivotal determination. We suggest in particular how supervisors should structure their relationships with semi-public gatekeepers such as lawyers, auditors and consultants to keep abreast of the risk-allocating features of evolving transactional structures. Finally, this paper uses the example of credit funds as non-bank entities economically engaged in credit intermediation to illustrate the merits of the proposed normative framework and to highlight that multipolar regulatory dialogues are needed to shed light on the specific risk-allocating characteristics of recent contractual innovations.
Venture capital-backed firms, unavoidable value-destroying trade sales, and fair value protections
(2020)
This paper investigates the implications of the fair value protections contemplated by the standard corporate contract (i.e., the standard contract form for which corporate law provides) for the entrepreneur–venture capitalist relationship, focusing, in particular, on unavoidable value-destroying trade sales. First, it demonstrates that the typical entrepreneur–venture capitalist contract does institutionalize the venture capitalist’s liquidity needs, allowing, under some circumstances, for counterintuitive instances of contractually-compliant value destruction. Unavoidable value-destroying
trade sales are the most tangible example. Next, it argues that fair value protections can prevent the entrepreneur and venture capitalist from allocating the value that these transactions generate as they would want. Then, it shows that the reality of venture capital-backed firms calls for a process of adaptation of the standard corporate contract that has one major step in the deactivation or re-shaping of fair value protections. Finally, it argues that a standard corporate contract aiming to promote social welfare through venture capital should feature flexible fair value protections
Private equity has grown remarkably in the last 30 years. Given its rise to prominence, exceptional profitability and a more prolific and publicly visible buyout activity, regulation in the private equity space seemed inevitable. The 2007 global financial crisis furnished an opportunity to doubt the industry’s role and magnify the key concerns, providing momentum for calls to regulate the industry more aggressively. Ultimately, the regulatory change came from the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), which has been described as one of the most rigorously debated and controversial pieces of financial regulation to ever emerge from the European Union (EU).
The AIFMD is unique and unprecedented, yet there has been very little written about it in the context of private equity. Therefore, this thesis makes a contribution to this area of research by examining the implications of AIFMD for private equity and arguing that this EU Directive has a re-shaping effect on the industry that inevitably marks the end of the light-touch regulation in this area. Whilst the desire of policymakers to act and intervene decisively during market
downturns is understandable, there is a risk that the response may not be appropriate and result in a crisis-induced over-reaction.
This thesis demonstrates, amongst other things, that the AIFMD has created a particularly
complex regulatory regime which for the hitherto unregulated or lightly regulated fund managers has had a significant effect in the EU and beyond. Examples of the most impactful
provisions relate to authorisation, marketing, depositaries, acquisition of control, remuneration, and transparency and disclosure. The implication are wide-ranging, and there is a clear conflict between the opportunities (e.g. EU passport, AIFMD as a global brand) and threats (e.g. excessive compliance costs, exodus of fund managers from the EU), which depend on a firm’s size, domicile and the gap needed to be aligned between the pre- and post-AIFMD regime.
Although there will be no stark triumph of one position over another in the assessment of the AIFMD until all of its elements are fully implemented, overall the impact of the Directive has been material, requiring substantial work to comply with (or adapt to) the requirements, which in some cases are not only particularly onerous and costly, but also a bit misguided, discouraging, or fairly irrelevant.
This article is directed towards addressing the employment related issues encountered by female workers in the gig economy in the EU. It revolves around analysing ‘the switch’ from the traditional labour market to the platform economy. It subsequently explains, by drawing comparisons, that the issues of gender inequality in the brick and mortar world are still prevalent in world of the digital platform. In fact, new challenges have emerged which are specifically related to the gig economy. Female workers are now affected by the inherent bias of algorithms. Moreover, due to the unequivocal propagation of ‘flexibility’ which is used as a weapon to glorify the gig economy; women are even more likely to be pushed into precarious work. The other prominent issues of gender inequality like the dynamics of intersectionality, the gender pay gap and hiring policies in traditional and digital platforms are also examined. Furthermore, the existing regulatory frameworks addressing these issues are discussed with the possibility of catering to the gender inequality issues in the gig economy through policy development. The article concludes with a reflection on the need for the EU to take immediate and efficacious policy measures in respect of female workers in the gig economy.
Knowledge for justice : critical perspectives from southern african-nordic research partnerships
(2017)
With the adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, the purpose of development is being redefined in both social and environmental terms. Despite pushback from conservative forces, change is accelerating in many sectors. To drive this transformation in ways that bring about social, environmental and economic justice at a local, national, regional and global levels, new knowledge and strong cross-regional networks capable of foregrounding different realities, needs and agendas will be essential. In fact, the power of knowledge matters today in ways that humanity has probably never experienced before, placing an emphasis on the roles of research, academics and universities. In this collection, an international diverse collection of scholars from the southern African and Nordic regions critically review the SDGs in relation to their own areas of expertise, while placing the process of knowledge production in the spotlight. In Part I, the contributors provide a sober assessment of the obstacles that neo-liberal hegemony presents to substantive transformation. In Part Two, lessons learned from NorthSouth research collaborations and academic exchanges are assessed in terms of their potential to offer real alternatives. In Part III, a set of case studies supply clear and nuanced analyses of the scale of the challenges faced in ensuring that no one is left behind. This accessible and absorbing collection will be of interest to anyone interested in NorthSouth research networks and in the contemporary debates on the role of knowledge production. The Southern AfricanNordic Centre (SANORD) is a network of higher education institutions that stretches across Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Botswana, Namibia, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Universities in the southern African and Nordic regions that are not yet members are encouraged to join.
This article provides a novel explanation for the global intellectual property (IP) paradox, i.e. the consistent growth of the multilateral IP system in spite of mounting evidence that its effects are at best neutral if not disadvantageous for low-income and most middleincome countries and thus the majority of contracting states. It demonstrates that the multilateral IP system is deliberately structured as a virtual network that exhibits network effects similar to a social media platform, for example. The more members an IP treaty has, the more IP protection acceding states can secure for their nationals. Conversely, every accession enlarges the territory in which nationals of previous members can enjoy protection. Due to these increasing returns to adoption, signing up to and remaining part of the global IP network is attractive, irrespective of the immediate effects of a treaty.
The concept of solidarity has been receiving growing attention from scholars in a wide range of disciplines. While this trend coincides with widespread unsuccessful attempts to achieve solidarity in the real world, the failure of solidarity as such remains a relatively unexplored topic. In the case of the so-called European Union (EU) refugee crisis, the fact that EU member states failed to fulfil their commitment to solidarity is now regarded as established wisdom. But as we try to come to terms with failing solidarity in the EU we are faced with a number of important questions: are all instances of failing solidarity equally morally reprehensible? Are some motivations for resorting to unsolidaristic measures more valid than others? What claims have an effective countervailing force against the commitment to act in solidarity?
Populists in the EU often call for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights. These calls are often demagogic and parochial. This paper aims to show what exactly is both distinct and problematic with these populist calls from a normative point of view while not necessarily reducible to demagogy and parochialism. The overall aim of the paper is not to argue that all populists call for such restrictions nor to claim that all calls for such restrictions are populist. The purpose of the paper is rather humble. It only aims to show that populist calls for restrictions on EU immigrants’ access to welfare rights are characterised by two normatively problematic arguments that target two different subsets of the citizenry: what I dub for the purpose of this paper the moralists and the immoralists. It is the way populists address these two subsets of the citizenry, as well as the fact that they could simultaneously appeal to the concerns of both groups, that makes populist approaches to welfare rights both conceptually distinct to other approaches as well as potentially politically appealing to a more diverse population of voters.
This paper critically engages the legal and political framework for responding to democracy and rule of law backsliding in the EU. I develop a new and original critique of Article 7 TEU based on it being democratically illegitimate and normatively incoherent qua itself in conflict with EU fundamental values. Other more incremental and scaleable responses are desirable, and the paper moves on to assess the legitimacy of economic sanctions such as tying access to EU funds to performance on democratic and rule of law indicators or imposing fines on backsliding states. I hold such sanctions to be a priori legitimate, and argue that in some cases economic sanctions are even normatively required, given that EU material support of backsliding member states can amount to material complicity in their backsliding. However, an economic conditionality mechanism would need to be designed to minimize unjust and counterproductive effects. One way to pursue this could be to complement sanctions against the backsliding government with investment for prodemocratic actors in that state.
Recent developments in Hungary and Poland have made democratic backsliding a major issue of concern within the European Union (EU). This article focuses on the secondary agents that facilitate democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland: the European People’s Party (EPP), which has continually protected the Hungarian Fidesz government from EU sanctions, and the Hungarian ruling party Fidesz, which repeatedly promised to block any EU-level sanctions against Poland in the Council. The article analyses these agents’ behaviour as an instance of transnational complicity and passes a tentative judgment as to which of the two cases is normatively more problematic. The analysis has implications for possible countervailing responses to democratic backsliding within EU member states.
This article argues that populism, cosmopolitanism, and calls for global justice should be understood not as theoretical positions but as appeals to different segments of democratic electorates with the aim of assembling winning political coalitions. This view is called democratic realism: it considers political competition in democracies from a perspective that is realist in the sense that it focuses not first on the content of competing political claims but on the relationships among different components of the coalitions they work to mobilise in the pursuit of power. It is argued that Laclau’s populist theory offers a sort of realist critique of other populists, but that his view neglects the crucial dynamics of political coalition-building. When the relation of populism to global justice is rethought from this democratic realist angle, one can better understand the sorts of challenges each faces, and also where and how they come into conflict.
This article sheds light upon the role of the audience in the construction and amendment of populist representative claims that in themselves strengthen representative-represented relationships and simultaneously strengthen ties between the represented who belong to different constituencies. I argue that changes in populist representative claims can be explained by studying the discursive relationship between a populist representative and the audience as a conversation in which both poles give and receive something. From this perspective, populist representative claims, I also argue, can be understood as acts of bonding with the intended effect of constituting ‘the people,’ and inputs from the audience can be seen as conversational exercitives. Populist appeals therefore may change when the audience enacts new permissibility facts and signals to populist representatives that there is another way to strengthen relationships between several individuals belonging to otherwise-different constituencies.
A link between populism and social media is often suspected. This paper spells out a set of possible mechanisms underpinning this link: that social media changes the communication structure of the public sphere, making it harder for citizens to obtain evidence that refutes populist assumptions. By developing a model of the public sphere, four core functions of the public sphere are identified: exposing citizens to diverse information, promoting equality of deliberative opportunity, creating deliberative transparency, and producing common knowledge. A wellworking public sphere allows citizens to learn that there are genuine disagreements among citizens that are held in good faith. Social media makes it harder to gain this insight, opening the door for populist ideology.
Current work on populism stresses its relationship to nationalism. However, populists increasingly make claims to represent ‘the people’ across beyond national borders. This advent of ‘transnational populism’ has implications for work on cosmopolitan democracy and global justice. In this paper, we advance and substantiate three claims. First, we stress populism’s performative and claimmaking nature. Second, we argue that transnational populism is both theoretically possible and empirically evident in the contemporary global political landscape. Finally, we link these points to debates on democracy beyond the state. We argue that, due to the a) performative nature of populism, b) complex interdependencies of peoples, and c) need for populists to gain and maintain support, individuals in one state will potentially have their preferences, interests, and wants altered by transnational populists’ representative claims. We unpack what is normatively problematic in terms of democratic legitimacy about this and discuss institutional and non-institutional remedies.
As academic literatures and political demands, global justice and populism look like competing ways of diagnosing and addressing neoliberal inequality. But both misunderstand neoliberalism and consequently risk reinforcing rather than undermining it. Neoliberalism does not just break down political and social hierarchies, but also relies on and sustains them. Unless populists recognize this, they will find that assertions of sovereignty do more to reinforce neoliberalism and reproduce its hierarchies than to resist them. Recognizing neoliberalism as not simply corrosive of solidarity but also producing its own affective ties suggests that global justice advocates need to develop a critique of individual attitudes that egalitarian liberals have often seen as private and been hesitant to judge. In short, if either populism or global justice hope to take advantage of neoliberalism’s failures to advance an egalitarian politics, they need to reckon more carefully with their own entanglement with neoliberalism’s hopes and hierarchies.
This article examines whether autonomy as an educational aim should be defended at the global scale. It begins by identifying the normative issues at stake in global autonomy education by distinguishing them from the problems of autonomy education in multicultural nation-states. The article then explains why a planet-wide expansion of the ideal of autonomy is conceivable on the condition that the concept of autonomy is widened in a way that renders its precise meaning flexibly adjustable to a variety of distinct social and cultural contexts. A context-transcendent, core meaning of autonomy remains in place, however, according to which a person is only autonomous if she relates to the values and goals that direct her life in a way so that she sees them as her own and is able to identify and critically assess her principal reasons for action. Finally, the article addresses two challenges to the global expansion of autonomy education: the objection that autonomy is presently not the most important educational aim and the objection that global autonomy education is a form of cultural imperialism. It finds both objections wanting.
Introduction
(2020)
As a result of globalization, the number of people living outside of their countries of origin is on the rise. Among them are children of primary and secondary school age of varying socio-economic backgrounds. This article addresses the education-related challenges that children in such circumstances face. I first identify two principles – an educational adequacy principle and a presumption of responsibility on the part of a host country for meeting children’s educational
needs – which are widely employed to guide national policy decisions on educational content and the distribution of educational resources. I then discuss a number of problems that students living abroad face which, I argue, policies devised on the basis of these principles either systematically overlook or, in some cases, exacerbate. Finally, I offer two alternative principles – a cosmopolitan revision of the first and a replacement for the second with a focus on collective responsibility – designed to promote education policies better suited to a globalized world which might help to alleviate the barriers to success commonly encountered by children learning abroad.
This paper examines and rejects two normative justifications for low-fee private schools (LFPS), whose expansion throughout the Global South in recent years has been significant. The first justification – what I shall call the ideal thesis – contends that LFPS are the best mechanism to expand access to quality education, particularly at the primary level, and that the premise of their success is that they reject educational equality and state intervention in educational affairs, traditionally associated with public schools, embracing instead educational adequacy and unregulated markets for education. Against this thesis, the paper argues that an ideal educational arrangement must not do away with educational equality and some degree of state interference. The other justification for LFPS – the secondbest thesis – contends that although LFPS do not represent the ideal state of affairs, they nonetheless bring us a step closer to the ideal of universal primary education; they are a ‘realistic’ approximation to that goal. Against the second-best thesis, the paper argues that this justification commits the approximation fallacy: by deviating from the ideal educational arrangement LFPS may obstruct rather than facilitate its achievement.
This contribution develops a defence of a universalist conception of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) against three prominent critiques, which are, among others, put forward by postcolonial scholars. The first critique argues that GCE is essentially a project of globally minded elites and therefore expressive both of global educational injustices and of the values and lifestyles of a particular class or milieu. The second critique assumes that GCE is based on genuinely ‘Western values’ (e.g., in the form of a conception of human rights or conceptions of rationality or the self), which are neither universally accepted nor universally valid and therefore unjustly forced on members of non-Western cultures and societies. GCE, according to this critique, is assumed to be another version of the educational justification of a hegemonic and unjust global Western regime. The third critique focuses on the epistemological preconditions of GCE. It assumes that GCE relies on a particular, culturally embedded ‘Western epistemology,’ which perpetuates historically grown global educational and epistemic injustices by dominating and subjugating alternative epistemological approaches. With respect to the first critique I argue that it is to a certain extent sociologically plausible, but wrong when it is applied to the educational and political legitimacy of GCE. The second critique overestimates the consensus within the ‘Western tradition’ and underestimates the transnational dissemination of universalist ideals and values as well as its own reliance on universalist validity claims. I argue that in order to provide a plausible criticism of historically grown global educational and political injustices, it is imperative for GCE to integrate central insights provided by the postcolonial critique, without giving up on universalist ideals and values. The third critique is, according to my argumentation, based on flawed epistemological assumptions, which do not withstand critical scrutiny. Instead of identifying epistemic and scientific claims as the expressions of a particular ‘culture’ or geographical location (the ‘West’), I defend the position that philosophical and scientific research should ideally be conceived as a democratic and universalist project, whose emancipatory potential can only be realized on the basis of a universalist epistemology.
This paper explores how University as social entity has great potential to confront epistemic injustices by expanding epistemic capabilities. To do this, we primarily follow the contributions of scholars such as Miranda Fricker and José Medina. The epistemic capabilities and epistemic injustice nexus will be explored via two empirical cases: the first one is an experience developed in Lagos (Nigeria) using participatory video; the second is a service learning pedagogical strategy for final year undergraduate students conducted at Universidad de Ibagué (in Colombia). The Lagos experience shows how participatory action-research methodologies could promote epistemic capabilities and functioning, making it possible for the participants to generate interpretive materials to speak of their own realities. However, this experience is too limited to address testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. The Colombian experience is a remarkable experience that is building epistemic capabilities among students and other local participants. However, there is a hermeneutical and structural injustice that tends to give more value to disciplinary and codified knowledge at the expense of experiential and tacit knowledge.
This paper addresses the phenomenon of climate-induced displacement. I argue that there is scope for an account of asylum as compensation owed to those displaced by the impacts of climate change which needs only to appeal to minimal normative commitments about the requirements of global justice. I demonstrate the possibility of such an approach through an examination of the work of David Miller. Miller is taken as an exemplar of a broadly ‘international libertarian’ approach to global justice, and his work is a useful vehicle for this project because he has an established view about both responsibility for climate change and about the state’s right to exclude would-be immigrants. In the course of the argument, I set out the relevant aspects of Miller’s views, reconstruct an account of responsibility for the harms faced by climate migrants which is consistent with Miller’s views, and demonstrate why such an account yields an obligation to provide asylum as a form of compensation to ‘climate migrants.’
This paper discusses two possible difficulties with Catherine Lu’s powerful analysis of the moral response to our shared history of colonial evil; both of these difficulties stem from the rightful place of shame in that moral response. The first difficulty focuses on efficacy: existing states may be better motivated by shame at the past than by a shared duty to bring about a just future. The second focuses on equity: it is, at the very least, possible that shame over past misdeeds ought to be brought into the conversation about present duties, in a manner more robust than Lu’s analysis allows.
In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu endorses the idea that those who contribute to the reproduction of structural injustice have responsibilities to address that injustice (Lu, 2017). However, in the book, Lu does not explore the grounds and justification for recognising such a responsibility. In order to address this deficit, this paper proposes that those likely to contribute to the reproduction of structural injustice, in the future, have precautionary duties, in the present, that require them to take action aimed at preventing their future contribution. It is proposed that these ‘collectivization duties’ (Collins, 2013) require them to act responsively with a view to forming a collective that can end the structural injustice in question. This account recommends a collective-action solution alongside recognising that each socially connected agent is obliged to act. However, it does not entail that amorphous groups bear responsibilities and is appropriate in its attribution of blame, thus avoiding both Nussbaum’s (2011) critique of perpetually forward-looking accounts and the ‘agency objection’ (Wringe, 2010).
This article analyzes and criticizes the temporal orientation of Catherine Lu’s theory of colonial redress in Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. Lu argues that colonial historic injustice can, with few exceptions, justify special reparative measures only if these past injustices still contribute to structural injustice in contemporary social relations. Focusing on Indigenous peoples, I argue that the structural injustice approach can and should incorporate further backward looking elements. First, I examine how Lu’s account has backward-looking elements not present in other structural injustice accounts. Second, I suggest how the structural injustice approach could include additional backward-looking features. I presuppose here, with Lu, that all agents connected to an unjust social structure have a forwardlooking political responsibility to reform this structure, regardless of their relation (or lack thereof) to victims or perpetrators of historic injustice. However, I suggest that agents with connections to historic injustice can occupy a social position that makes them differently situated than other agents within that same structure, leading to differences in how these agents should discharge their forward-looking responsibility and differentiated liability for failure to do so. Third, I argue that Lu obscures the importance of rectifying material dispossession. Reparations, pace Lu, can be justified beyond a minimum threshold of disadvantage. Theorists of settler colonialism and Indigenous scholars show how the dispossession of Indigenous land can be seen as a structure that has not yet ended. I conclude by arguing that rectification can be a precondition for genuine reconciliation.
Structural alienation: Lu's structural approach to reconciliation from within a relational framework
(2019)
In Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics Catherine Lu argues that structural reconciliation, rather than interactional reconciliation, ought to be the primary normative goal for political reconciliation efforts. I suggest that we might have good reason to want to retain relational approaches – such as that of Linda Radzik – as the primary focus of reconciliatory efforts, but that Lu’s approach is invaluable for identifying the parties who ought to bear responsibility for those efforts in cases of structural injustice. First, I outline Lu’s analysis of reconciliation, where she argues for the normative priority of structural approaches within the global political sphere, and propose that it will be useful to identify whether or not a relational account could instead identify underlying structural injustices. Second, I examine one particular relational account of reconciliation (based on Radzik’s account of atonement) and argue that this type of account brings to light underlying structural injustices of the kind Lu is concerned with. Finally, I identify an issue for relational accounts in identifying relevant responsible parties for reconciliation before returning to Lu’s structural account to address this gap.
Traditionally, in deciding whether some strategy or action in war is proportionate and necessary and thus permissible both international law and just war theory focus exclusively on civilian deaths and the destruction of civilian infrastructure. I argue in this paper that any argument that can explain why we should care about collateral killing and damage to infrastructure can also explain why collateral displacement matters. I argue that displacement is a foreseeable near-proximate cause of lethal harm to civilians and is relevant for proportionality and necessity calculi. Accepting my argument has significant consequences for what we are permitted to do in war and for what obligations we have towards refugees that result from our actions in war.
Moral refugee markets
(2018)
States are increasingly paying other states to host refugees. For example, in 2010 the EU paid Libya €50 million to continue hosting the refugees within its borders, and five years later Australia offered Cambodia $31.16 million to accept asylum seekers living in Naru. These exchanges, which I call ‘refugees markets,’ have faced criticism by philosophers. Some philosophers claim the markets fail to ensure true protection, and are demeaning, expressing just how much refugees are unwanted. In response, some have defended refugee markets, claiming they can ensure refugees have protection and are not demeaned. I argue that many markets do demean refugees, and therefore have moral costs, but can still be all-things-considered preferable to alternative schemes if they protect refugees more than these alternative schemes.
This essay develops, within the terms of the recent New York Declaration, an account of the shared responsibility of states to refugees and of how the character of that responsibility effects the ways in which it can be fairly shared. However, it also moves beyond the question of the general obligations that states owe to refugees to consider ways in which refugee choices and refugee voice can be given appropriate standing with the global governance of refuge. It offers an argument for the normative significance of refugee’s reasons for choosing states of asylum and linked this to consideration of a refugee matching system and to refugee quota trading conceived as responsibility-trading, before turning to the issue of the inclusion of refugee voice in relation to the justification of the norms of refugee governance and in relation to the institutions and practices of refugee governance through which those norms are given practical expression.
The issue of statelessness poses problems for the statist (or nationalist) approach to the philosophy of immigration. Despite the fact that the statist approach claims to constrain the state’s right to exclude with human rights considerations, the arguments statists offer for the right of states to determine their own immigration policies would also justify citizenship rules that would render some children stateless. Insofar as rendering a child stateless is best characterized as a violation of human rights and insofar as some states have direct responsibility for causing such harm, the problem of non-refugee stateless children points to greater constraints than most statists accept on states’ right to determine their own rules for membership. While statists can ultimately account for the right not to be rendered stateless, recognizing these additional human rights constraints ultimately weakens the core of the statist position.
While global justice theorists heatedly discuss the responsibilities of the affluent and powerful, those states which can legitimately be seen as victims of global injustice have seldom, if ever, been considered as duty bearers to whom responsibilities can be attached. However, recognising agents whose options are constrained not only as victims, but also as duty bearers is necessary as a proof of respect for their agency and indispensable to mobilise the type of action required to alter global injustices. In this article, I explore what responsibilities state officials of dominated states have. I argue that they have the responsibility to resist domination in the name of the dominated states members. While under particular circumstances this responsibility gives rise to a duty to engage in acts of state civil disobedience, under other circumstances state officials of dominated states ought to resist domination in an internal, attitudinal way by recognising themselves as outcome responsible agents.