Global justice : the right to life and the global community

Abstract

In the context of globalization, we witness the facts of extreme poverty and radical inequalities. These facts then give rise to a question—whether the global conditions of extreme poverty and radical inequalities are just or not. To address this, this thesis attempts to theorize about global justice. The hypothesis of this thesis is that the right to life demands obligatory actions at a global level as a matter of justice. Global justice is widely discussed by contemporary political philosophy, but sufficient attention and focus are not given to how duties are grounded. For this reason, four questions are left unresolved: A. Which value should be commonly pursued and given priority to others at the global level; B. If the value which should be given priority can be recognized by the legal concept of right, what is/are the duty/duties correlative to the right; C. What are the principles of global justice in the global context to specify and distribute the correlative duties to agents of justice on the global scale; and D. How the principles of global justice should be institutionalized at the global level. To address these questions, this thesis highlights the significance and priority of the value of life. It proposes two principles of global justice which promote the common good of life at the global level. The first principle of global justice demands that each person has an equal right to life and equal participation in the irreducibly communal aspects of the right to life protected by law and under the rule of law in the global society. The second principle of global justice specifies that global society and economic inequalities are just only to the extent that they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of the global society, so as to secure the equal participation in the various aspects of the right to life. It also applies the suggested two principles to the specific area of health to evaluate the global institutional arrangements of TRIPS and proposes objectives for global governance as oriented towards global justice. The whole process of explaining, justifying and applying the two principles of global justice, then, answers the four unresolved questions and justifies the hypothesis of this thesis. This research is significant in three respects. First, it tries to contribute to the current discussion of global justice by highlighting the significance of duties. Second, it reveals that duties are grounded on the moral consensus on the values and the relative importance of different values in a community, which provides a better approach to theorizing about justice in general. Third, it also proposes objectives for the future global governance to improve the global conditions in a just way.