From a Pluralism of Grounds to Proto‐Legal Relations: Accounting for the Grounds of Obligations of Justice

• Date: 01 March 2017
• Author: George Pavlakos
• Published date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/raju.12152

From a Pluralism of Grounds to

Proto-Legal Relations: Accounting for

the Grounds of Obligations of Justice

GEORGE PAVLAKOS*

Abstract. In this paper I discuss critically Mathias Risse’s paper “Responsibility and

Global Justice.” First, I argue that for Risse’s pluralist account of the grounds of jus-

tice to hold together, there is need to presuppose a monist standpoint which ulti-

mately contributes to grounding principles of justice. Second, I point out that Risse’s

understanding of obligations of accountability and justification is rather narrow in

that it functions as an addendum to obligations of justice. Conversely, I will suggest

that the obligation of accountability plays a deeper role: The conditions that ground

it feature at the same time among the grounds of obligations of justice. Accordingly,

the kind of relation thatgives rise to a duty among agents to account for their actions

must be in place whenobligations of justice obtain. Following on from these remarks

I will adumbrate an alternative account of the relation which grounds (enforceable)

obligations of justice.

1. Outline

The paper focuses on two aspects of Mathias Risse’s paper “Responsibility and

Global Justice.” First, I shall suggest that for his pluralist account of the grounds of

justice to hold together, there is a need to presuppose a monist standpoint which

ultimately contributes to grounding principles of justice. Second, I will point out

that Risse’s understanding of obligations of accountability and justification is rather

narrow in that it functions as an addendum to obligations of justice. To begin with,

* An early predecessor of this paper was presented as a comment to Mathias Risse’s keynote

lecture “Responsibility and Global Justice” at the GLOTHRO workshop on Responsibility and

Obligations from Global Justice, which took place on 12–13 October 2013 at the Centre of Law

and CosmopolitanValues, University of Antwerp.I thank Mathias Risse for his generous recep-

tion of my comment and other valuable remarks. I have also benefited a lot from the partici-

pants’ comments on the day, in particular those of Tria Gkouvas, Alexia Herwig, Wouter

Vandenhole, and Arne Vandenbogaerde. The work reported on in this publication was finan-

cially supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF), in the framework of the Research

Networking Programme GLOTHRO. The author would also like to acknowledge the financial

support of the GrantAgency of the Czech Academy of Sciencesthrough a project on “The Role

of the Principle of Proportionality in the Decision-Making Process of Courts” (grant ID: 15-

23955S).

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C2017 The Author. Ratio Juris V

C2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main

Street, Malden 02148, USA.

Ratio Juris. Vol. 30 No. 1 March 2017 (59–74)

he presents the obligation to give account for or to justify our actions to others as

one that is added, on the side, to obligations of justice. Furthermore, the obligation

to give account is, on Risse’s view, a special obligation which might or might not

arise alongside duties of justice. Conversely, I will suggest that the obligation of

accountability plays a deeper role: The conditions that ground it feature at the

same time among the grounds of obligations of justice. Accordingly, the kind of

relation that gives rise to a duty among agents to account for their actions must be

in place when obligations of justice obtain. Following on from these remarks I will

adumbrate an alternative account of the relation which grounds (enforceable) obli-

gations of justice.

2. Grounds of Justice: From Monism to Pluralism

In the first part of the paper I will reconstruct Risse’s account of the grounds of jus-

tice by positioning it within current debates in political philosophy. I shall suggest

that Risse’s pluralist account poses a challenge to standard views of justice embrac-

ing a monistic account of the grounds of justice, but not without itself alluding to a

monism of sorts. Ultimately my aim will be to suggest that Risse’s rejection of the

standard monistic picture of justice relies on two central moral concepts, account-

ability and justification, creating a unified practical point of view, on which princi-

ples of justice can be grounded.

In respect of the grounds of justice,

1

Risse argues for a pluralist understanding of

what he labels “internationalism.” While Internationalism grants particular norma-

tive relevance to the state, “it qualifies this relevance by embedding the state into

other grounds that are associated with their own principles of justice and that thus

impose additional obligations on those who share membership in a state” (Risse

2016).

Internationalism offers a refreshing take on the recent debate on global justice:

While most of the recent theories display a monistic flavour, Risse proposes plural-

ism with respect to the grounds of principles of justice.

2

To appreciate the novelty

of Risse’s account we must turn briefly to the discussion on the grounds of justice

within contemporary political philosophy.

Instructively, we can illustrate the search about the grounds of global justice as

involving two kinds of query: a question about the site and another concerning the

scope of principles of distributive justice (Abizadeh 2007). Considerations of site

relate to those single properties which are present when principles of justice are at

work. In contrast, the scope of justice refers to the range of persons that are recipro-

cally connected (be it as addressees or issuers) through claims of justice. The ques-

tion about the grounds of justice involves considerations of both site and scope.

1

I will be discussingobligations of justice as partof a wider genus of obligations, namely,politi-

cal obligations.As such I consider all enforceable obligations that pertainamong agents who are

related in thespecial manner we call political.Political obligations typicallycomprise obligations

of distributivebut also corrective justice.Risse seems to accommodatethis point in claiming that

most justicerelations can be redescribed appropriately as distributive(Risse 2016).

2

Risse speaks moreabstractly of grounds of justice.I prefer to link grounds to principlesof jus-

tice, in order to reflectmore accurately the fact that what is groundedare principles, rather than

sets of principlesor justice as a whole.

60 George Pavlakos

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C2017 The Author. Ratio Juris V

C2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Ratio Juris, Vol. 30, No. 1