A collage of images, featuring most prominently a person holding a sign reading "no justice no peace"

Justice Everywhere a blog about philosophy in public affairs

Democracy / Economics / International

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TTIP and Human Rights: The Need to Fight Harmful Tax Practices

Matthias Goldmann is Junior Professor of International Public Law and Financial Law at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. This guest post is Part 1 of a special series on TTIP that we’ll be running in the coming weeks.

Anti-TTIP protesters in London, 2014. Wikimedia Commons.

Anti-TTIP protesters in London, 2014. Wikimedia Commons.

The ongoing debate about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has shed new light on the effects of trade on economic and social equality. While it is well understood in theory that free trade is likely to generate aggregate welfare benefits, in practice the allocation of these benefits seems to be highly unequal. In developed economies, free trade might lead to the outsourcing of jobs of low-skilled workers to places with lower labor costs. In developing economies, trade might generate low-skilled jobs, but with international competition preventing wages from rising. Entrepreneurs and trading companies rather than workers seem to collect a large share of the benefits of international trade. As I will argue, this threatens the economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights) of low-skilled workers. Free trade agreements (FTAs) are therefore only acceptable to the extent that participating governments take measures to mitigate their impact on low-skilled workers. To generate revenue for such measures, states should devise strategies to combat international tax evasion and tax competition.

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General

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Dear fellow Europeans (in passport and spirit),

this is a dark day for the European Union. Great Britain has cast its vote, and will part ways from the EU. Both for Great Britain and for the EU, things won’t continue as before. But it is up to us where they go from here.

It is sometimes said that the EU has become a cold and technocratic projects. But the EU is, first and foremost, a project of peace, and peace is a matter of the heart. The EU a project of peaceful cooperation among people who have fight endless wars, for centuries after centuries. It is heart-wrenching to see it falter as it does today, threatened by waves of nationalism and chauvinism, in Great Britain and elsewhere.  (more…)

Democracy / Duties / Health / Liberty

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Euthanasia and Slippery Slope Arguments

One argument made against the proposal to legalise assisted dying in the UK is that making this change might result in older citizens feeling pressured to choose death, increased pressure on people to think about and defend their existence, and theslippery-slope inevitable acceptance of voluntary and, then, involuntary and non-voluntary euthanasia. This kind of argument can be called a slippery slope argument. A
slippery slope argument claims that if we make a proposed policy change, other changes or outcomes will occur, and because these other outcomes are objectionable, we should not make the policy change. I am generally sceptical of slippery slope arguments and in this post I wish to register some issues with their use.

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Academia / Distribution / Economics / Gender / Governance / International

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Call for Papers: Labour Market Injustice Workshop

Newcastle University & Durham University, 14-15 December 2016

Labour market injustice is a pressing problem both domestically and globally. None the less, there continues to be considerable disagreement about how to understand and locate the moral concerns involved. Many commentators understand labour market injustice in interactional terms, viewing it as a problem with the wage or contract terms employers offer their workers. But, there is also an emerging trend towards thinking about it in more structural terms. One such thread involves conceptualising labour market injustices as systemic problems, such as understanding exploitation or discrimination as group-to-group phenomena. Another thread involves articulating proposals to prevent labour market injustices through institutional and policy level responses.

This workshop will operate as a detailed discussion of a set of works-in-progress that consider these emerging angles on (domestic and global) labour market injustice. We invite submissions grounded in any area of political theory, including both applied work and more theoretical or methodological contributions, and also papers that consider the intersection with importantly related disciplines, such as law and economics. Topics may include, but are not limited to, areas such as:

  • Labour rights
  • Discrimination
  • Work-life balance
  • Business organisation
  • Supply chains
  • Brain-drain
  • Exploitation

Confirmed participants

  • Anca Gheaus (University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
  • Martin O’Neill (University of York)

Workshop Organisers

  • Elizabeth Kahn (Durham University)
  • Tom Parr (University of Essex)
  • Andrew Walton (Newcastle University)

Submissions

Abstracts of up to 500 words, accompanied by contact details and institutional affiliation, should be sent to andrew.walton@ncl.ac.uk by 30th September 2016.  We will notify accepted papers by 14th October.

For further information, please contact andrew.walton@ncl.ac.uk, tparr@essex.ac.uk, or elizabeth.kahn@durham.ac.uk

Economics / Governance / International

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Interview: Peter Dietsch on Catching Capital

Taxation is amongst the most hotly debated and politically contentious issues of the twenty-first century.  It has long been an important component of state policy for funding public services and managing inequalities.  Recently, it has increasingly been under the spotlight in virtue of international concerns – worries about multi-national companies shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions and wealthy indDietschividuals exploiting tax loopholes, often to the effect of reducing state tax revenues.  Such realities raise important questions about the ethics of taxation in a globalised era and have been the focus of much work by Université de Montreal philosopher Peter Dietsch across his work in The Journal of Political Philosophy, Review of International Studies, Moral Philosophy and Politics, Ethical Perspectives, and the volume Global Tax Governance – What is Wrong With It and How to Fix It (co-edited with Thomas Rixen). In 2015, Peter published a book – Catching Capital: The Ethics of Tax Competition – on these issues and, when the opportunity presented itself, we took the chance to interview Peter about this work and heard some of his interesting reflections on the subject:

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Academia / Climate / Education

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The ethics of teaching climate ethics

I just finished teaching a new, final year undergraduate course on ‘Global Justice and Climate Change’. This is the first time that I’ve had the opportunity to design and teach a course based on my own area of research and in many ways it seems to have been a success. I’ve struggled a bit throughout, though, with figuring out how to think about what I’m doing and what I should perhaps be trying to achieve. (more…)

Distribution / Economics / Gender

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Would an unconditional basic income be just?

On June 5th, Switzerland will be the first country to vote on an unconditional basic income (UBI). UBI is “an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement”. Although not new, the idea is revolutionary in that it decouples income from work, and it conflicts with many people’s intuitions about justice. It cannot be fair if someone who chooses not to work because she wants to read novels all day is entitled to the same basic income as a person who cannot work due to disability, right? At the same time, the idea has been defended not only on economic and pragmatic grounds, but also for reasons of justice. I will assess the idea from the perspective of justice and conclude that justice recommends giving it a try.

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Duties / Migration

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Migration & Feasibility: Real Constraints or Cheap Excuses?

border-fence-becoming-birds

In the current discussions about our duties (of justice) towards refugees, feasibility constraints are often invoked to justify the limits of what can be done: Austria has to close its borders and limit the number of daily asylum applications due to feasibility constraints, the feasibility limit of refugees admitted to the European Union as part of the current resettlement scheme with Turkey is set at 172.000 or mayors of various cities claim that it is not possible for them to shelter refugees.

Following these debates, I often gain the impression that infeasibility claims are invoked far too easily. Hardly ever they are based on feasibility studies and often they seem more of an excuse to shy away from our duties (of justice). At the same time, powerful arguments for the need to account for feasibility constraints when identifying our duties of justice in the non-ideal real world have been put forward in the literature on non-ideal theories of justice: what justice demands from us should not go beyond what we can possibly do. How is it possible to account for feasibility considerations in this later sense, without allowing them to become a cheap excuse in political debate to shy away from our duties of justice towards refugees?

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Animals / Climate / Duties

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Why good intentions need informed intentions

IMG_20150802_164103738

In discussions about climate change and climate justice, there has been quite some debate about individual duties – should we try to change our lifestyle to reduce emissions, or should we try to influence political processes that bring about institutional change? It always seemed to me that the correct answer is: do both, or whatever you are able to do. Given how drastic the consequences of climate change are likely to be, and given how climate-unfriendly our Western lifestyle typically is, this seemed the right answer. Wouter Peeters has made this case in previous posts, so there is no need to repeat the arguments here. But I’ll add a third point: in our attempts to do good, we also have a duty to be as well-informed as possible.

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Distribution / Economics / Liberty / Rights

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On what we should get out of work (other than money!)

bruegel_peasants

Remember what good things you hoped awaited you within a future job when you were very young and still preparing for one. And have you ever been unemployed long-term, worried that you’d not find work in the near future? In this case, remember why it was distressing (if it was). Here I’ll talk about the things we can, and should, get out of work – and argue that these goods are so important that we ought to reorganise employment. (more…)