Obligations of distributive justice and the requirements for effective coercion.

What is it about?

There is little agreement about what grounds obligations of distributive justice. This paper defends cosmopolitan coercion theory against recent criticism that coercive rule is not even sufficient to generate obligations of distributive justice. On one of the most sustained arguments against the idea that coercion is sufficient to generate obligations of distributive justice, critics object that coercion, and other nonvoluntary relationships, cannot fix the scope, or content, of these obligations. At best, critics argue, nonvoluntary relationships can ground obligations of charity or humanity. This paper argues that this Scope/Content Critique fails, in part, because it does not recognize the motivation for coercion theories. Moreover, despite assertions to the contrary, the Scope/Content Critique assumes coercion must suffice to ground obligations of distributive justice. Nonvoluntarists can hold there are many things, in addition to nonvoluntary relations, that can ground them.

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Photo by Hannah Jacobson on Unsplash

Photo by Hannah Jacobson on Unsplash