The prosecution of international crimes is a challenge both under international and domestic law. Taking the example of international criminal law (ICL) , the fullest realization of its objectives is influenced by many factors including; (a) the adoption of appropriate laws by states, (b) the adequacy of the ICL framework on definitions of crimes and principles of criminal responsibility, (c) the level of political control and involvement in decision making related to investigation, prosecution or extradition, (d) Problems with exclusion including (...) restrictions on the rights of victims with regard to the proceedings and to reparation, and (e) The application of provisions for amnesties and similar measures of impunity. -/- Over the years, the mandate of States under ICL has expanded. Key reforms under ICL and domestic laws have been led by the above mentioned concerns. The scope of state obligations, in particular, has been shaped by the standards adopted under the ICL framework including the "duty to prosecute" international crimes. The article discusses the normative significance of the "duty to prosecute". (shrink)

This paper considers whether states have a duty to accept those who cross borders to escape environmental disasters associated with climate change. It then examines how such a responsibility might be distributed, focusing on the predicament of the citizens of small island states expected to be inundated by rising sea levels. In assessing states' responsibility to admit these individuals, I draw on Walzer's theory of mutual aid, demonstrating that even under this narrow conception of states' obligations, a duty to (...) accept displaced islanders can be established. However, the proximity principle is ill-suited to determining which states should shoulder responsibility in this situation. Drawing on Miller's account of remedial responsibility and his ‘connection theory,’ I suggest that the obligation to accept ‘environmental refugees’ should be shouldered principally by affluent states that share significant degrees of causal and moral responsibility for climate change, and also have particularly strong capacities to assist the displaced. (shrink)

This article—a tribute to philosopher Bat-Ami Bar On—argues that states have obligations to not only resettle refugees, but also to put into place laws, policies, and procedures that are likely to ameliorate exclusionary attitudes and socio-political stances of existing members toward refugees and other forcibly displaced persons. The article begins with a recollection of Bar On, who encouraged the author to pursue the well-being of refugees as a worthy philosophical topic. The article then argues that refugee camps do not (...) serve the purpose of justice; therefore, resettlement must be sought. Resettlement, in turn, raises several questions that egalitarians must take more seriously. In the end, equitable resettlement of refugees requires a broad based ethics of inclusivity and equality that bolsters community willingness to share spaces and “live and let live” in the face of cultural differences. (shrink)

After having received little attention over the past decades, one of the least known human rights—the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications—has had its dust blown off. Although included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)—be it at the very end of both instruments -this right hardly received any attention from States, UN bodies and programmes and academics. The role of science in (...) societies and its benefits and potential danger were discussed in various international fora, but hardly ever in a human rights context. Nowadays, within a world that is increasingly turning to science and technology for solutions to persistent socio-economic and development problems, the human dimension of science also receives increased attention, including the human right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications. This contribution analyses the possible legal obligations of States in relation to the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, in particular as regards health. (shrink)

Largely thanks to Mill’s influence, the suggestion that the state ought to restrict the distribution of misinformation will strike most philosophers as implausible. Two of Mill’s influential assumptions are particularly relevant here: first, that free speech debates should focus on moral considerations such as the harm that certain forms of expression might cause; second, that false information causes minimal harm due to the fact that human beings are psychologically well equipped to distinguish truth and falsehood. However, in addition to (...) our moral obligations, we also have a distinct set of epistemic obligations—and even when a false belief doesn’t harm anyone, it constitutes an epistemically bad outcome. Moreover, Mill was profoundly mistaken about human psychology: human beings are vulnerable to the influence of a wide variety of false claims via a wide variety of psychological mechanisms. Consequently, there is a purely epistemic justification for restricting the distribution of misinformation: because each of us has an individual epistemic obligation to avoid unnecessary exposure to misinformation, and because avoiding such exposure is simply too difficult when acting alone, we all have a shared epistemic obligation to establish laws or regulations restricting the widespread distribution of misinformation. (shrink)

The starting point of the paper is the frequent ascription of moral duties to states, especially in the context of problems of global justice. It is widely assumed that industrialized or wealthy countries in particular have a moral obligation or duties of justice to shoulder burdens of poverty reduction or climate change adaptation and mitigation. But can collectives such as states actually hold moral duties? If answering this affirmatively: what does it actually mean to say that a state has (...) moral obligations or duties of justice? In this paper I argue that states can be considered collective agents which can hold moral duties. If a collective holds moral duties this entails duties for its individual members. I show how depending on their position within the collective these duties differ. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: I Legitimacy and Consent II Obligations of True Community III Integrity and Obedience IV Individuality and Community V The Universality of Obligation Acknowledgement.

Since Plato wrote of political obligation in his dialogue Crito, obligation in general has been of ongoing interest to philosophers. In that dialogue, Socrates argues that he was under an obligation to obey the laws of Athens and comply with a sentence of death. During the course of the argument, he raises and offers solutions to many of the central issues about obligation that philosophers still puzzle over. For instance, how can obligations have the grip on us that they (...) do—in some cases, so that we are willing to die rather than not fulfill them? What is the nature and justification of moral and legal obligations? Do we have an obligation to obey the state, and if so, why? (shrink)

As many in the United States feel a need to take a side in the ongoing culture wars, the people who make up the field of bioethics have an obligation to directly engage with those who hold different political views. If bioethics is an academic field, it must also affirm the overall values of the academy to continually challenge central assumptions. If the field wishes to be a part of the development of public policy, it must be able to construct (...) such policies that in some fundamental manner honor the values of the opposition. (shrink)

The article deals with the question whether a state might be held liable for the infringement of the European Convention on Human Rights if its national court of last instance fails to implement the obligation to make a reference for a preliminary ruling to the Court of Justice of the European Union under the conditions laid down in Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and developed in the case-law of the Court. Relying on (...) well-established practice that an arbitrary decision not to refer a question for a preliminary ruling theoretically could infringe the right to a fair trial, the author analyses the practical application of the “arbitrariness rule” and discusses whether the European Court of Human Rights has established any specific criteria that national courts are required to bring into play in order to substantiate the decision not to refer. (shrink)

The purpose of the present discussion is to present, reflect upon, and evaluate the effective legal regulations concerning the obligation to terminate a medical experiment. The considerations made herein aim at providing an answer to the question whether the aforesaid legal regulations are clear and sufficient. The said analysis is based on the following source: The Act of 5 December 1996 concerning the Professions of General Practitioner and Dental Practitioner. The regulations concerning the obligation to discontinue a medical experiment, both (...) by the will of the participant and on the physician’s initiative, are of great importance owing to the fact that they guarantee protection of the patients taking part in the experimental study. The provisions implicitly oblige the physician to monitor the patients’ state of health and conduct constant assessment whether or not further carrying on the experiment is expedient and admissible. The legal regulations effective in Poland are explicit and sufficient. Their wording does not raise any considerable reservations. As it appears, the legislature managed to work out appropriate rules so as to minimize the danger zone for the participants of clinical tests and at the same time implement a guarantee that participants’ rights shall be respected. (shrink)

This article adapts the economic and social rights fulfillment index (SERF Index) developed by Fukuda-Parr, Lawson-Remer, and Randolph to assess the extent to which each of the 50 US states fulfills the economic and social rights obligations set forth in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It then extends the index to incorporate discrimination and examines differences in economic and social rights fulfillment by race and sex within each of the states. The overall SERF Index score (...) varies between states from below 70% to almost 85%, with wider variation on some of the six substantive rights that comprise the overall SERF Index score. The findings reveal limited sex discrimination but pronounced race discrimination. (shrink)

Political obligation is concerned with the clash between the individual’s claim to self-governance and the right of the state to claim obedience. It is a central and ancient problem in political philosophy. In this authoritative introduction, Dudley Knowles frames the problem of obligation in terms of the duties citizens have to the state and each other. Drawing on a wide range of key works in political philosophy, from Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume and G. W. F. Hegel (...) to John Rawls, A. John Simmons, Joseph Raz and Ronald Dworkin, Political Obligation: A Critical Introduction is an ideal starting point for those coming to the topic for the first time, as well as being an original and distinctive contribution to the literature. Knowles distinguishes the philosophical problem of obligation - which types of argument may successfully ground the legitimacy of the state and the duties of citizens - from the political problem of obligation - whether successful arguments apply to the actual citizens of particular states. Against the anarchist and modern skeptics, Knowles claims that a plurality of arguments promise success when carefully formulated and defended, and discusses in turn ancient and modern theories of social contract and consent, fairness and gratitude, utilitarianism, justice and a Samaritan duty of care for others. Against modern communitarians, he defends a distinctive liberalism: ‘the state proposes, the citizen disposes’. (shrink)

If it is a requirement of justice that everyone has access to basic goods and services, then justice requires that the work that is necessary to produce the relevant goods and provide the relevant services is performed. Two widely accepted views, however, together rule out requirements of justice to perform such work. These are, roughly, that the state cannot force people to perform it, and that individuals are not obligated to perform it voluntarily. Lucas Stanczyk argues that we should (...) resolve this inconsistency by endorsing widely rejected coercive policies, such as compulsory service requirements. I argue that Stanczyk’s proposal fails to fully resolve the inconsistency, and that any acceptable resolution will entail that individuals can be obligated to voluntarily perform the necessary work. I conclude that accepting even modest requirements of access to basic goods and services requires rejecting the view that principles of justice do not apply directly to individual conduct. (shrink)

Many political theorists today deny that citizenship can be defended on liberal grounds alone. Cosmopolitans claim that loyalty to a particular state is incompatible with universal liberal principles, which hold that we have equal duties of justice to persons everywhere, while nationalist theorists justify civic obligations only by reaching beyond liberal principles and invoking the importance of national culture. In Liberal Loyalty, Anna Stilz challenges both views by defending a distinctively liberal understanding of citizenship. Drawing on Kant, Rousseau, (...) and Habermas, Stilz argues that we owe civic obligations to the state if it is sufficiently just, and that constitutionally enshrined principles of justice in themselves--rather than territory, common language, or shared culture--are grounds for obedience to our particular state and for democratic solidarity with our fellow citizens. She demonstrates that specifying what freedom and equality mean among a particular people requires their democratic participation together as a group. Justice, therefore, depends on the authority of the democratic state because there is no way equal freedom can be defined or guaranteed without it. Yet, as Stilz shows, this does not mean that each of us should entertain some vague loyalty to democracy in general. Citizens are politically obligated to their own state and to each other, because within their particular democracy they define and ultimately guarantee their own civil rights. Liberal Loyalty is a persuasive defense of citizenship on purely liberal grounds. (shrink)

University of Calgary, Canada and Tel Aviv University, Israel mkeren{at}ucalgary.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Stacy Nyikos University of Tulsa, USA stacy-nyikos{at}utulsa.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Although questions of political obligation have been much discussed by scholars, little attention has been paid to moral reasons advanced by actual states to justify the compliance of their subjects. We examine the `self-image of the state' through Supreme Court decisions in the (...) USA, Germany, and Israel. Because moral reasons are expressed especially clearly in cases regarding obligations to provide military service, we focus on these. In spite of their important constitutional and judicial differences, the three states support military obligations along similar lines, though with some differences. In all three countries, appeal is made to obligations of reciprocity. Individuals must serve in order to provide the important benefit of defense. This `service conception' of political obligation accords norms of fairness or equality a central role, in order to justify the service of particular individuals. Reasons for less emphasis on fairness in Israeli cases are examined, while we claim that the overall similarities of the three countries provide some measure of indirect support to a theory of political obligation based on the principle of fairness. Key Words: political obligation • military service • fairness • principle of fairness • liberalism • state. (shrink)

When may a physician enroll a patient in clinical research? An adequate answer to this question requires clarification of trust-based obligations of the state and the physician-researcher respectively to the patient-subject. The state relies on the voluntarism of patient-subjects to advance the public interest in science. Accordingly, it is obligated to protect the agent-neutral interests of patient-subjects through promulgating standards that secure these interests. Component analysis is the only comprehensive and systematic specification of regulatory standards for benefit-harm (...) evaluation by research ethics committees (RECs). Clinical equipoise, a standard in component analysis, ensures the treatment arms of a randomised control trial are consistent with competent medical care. It thus serves to protect agent-neutral welfare interests of the patient-subject. But REC review occurs prior to enrolment, highlighting the independent responsibility of the physician-researcher to protect the agent-relative welfare interests of the patient-subject. In a novel interpretation of the duty of care, we argue for a “clinical judgment principle” which requires the physician-researcher to exercise judgment in the interests of the patient-subject taking into account evidence on treatments and the patient-subject‘s circumstances. (shrink)

Abstract As non-state actors, PMSCs are not embraced by traditional state-dominated doctrines of international law. However, international law has itself failed to keep pace with the evolution of states and state-based actors, to which strong Westphalian notions of sovereignty are no longer applicable. It is argued that these structural inadequacies stand in the way of international regulation of PMSCs, rather than defects in international human rights and humanitarian law per se. By analyzing understandings of legal responsibility, where (...) such structural issues come to the fore, it is argued that, rather than attempting to resolve the essentially ideological dispute about the inherent functions of a state, regulatory regimes should focus on the positive obligations of states and PMSCs, and the interactions between them. Applying the results of this analysis, current and proposed regulatory regimes are evaluated and their shortcomings revealed. (shrink)

This is the first in-depth study of popular attitudes towards political obligations and how these are viewed by the state. Leading political theorist George Klosko provides a full defense of a theory of political obligation based on the principle of fairness, which is widely viewed as the strongest theory of obligation currently available. This theory is then extended into a developed 'multiple principle' theory of obligation.

Individualists claim that collective obligations are reducible to the individual obligations of the collective’s members. Collectivists deny this. We set out to discover who is right by way of a deontic logic of collective action that models collective actions, abilities, obligations, and their interrelations. On the basis of our formal analysis, we argue that when assessing the obligations of an individual agent, we need to distinguish individual obligations from member obligations. If a collective has (...) a collective obligation to bring about a particular state of affairs, then it might be that no individual in the collective has an individual obligation to bring about that state of affairs. What follows from a collective obligation is that each member of the collective has a member obligation to help ensure that the collective fulfills its collective obligation. In conclusion, we argue that our formal analysis supports collectivism. (shrink)

RESUMO O artigo examina a função da noção de obrigação política no pensamento do filósofo italiano da política e do direito Alessandro Passerin d’Entrèves (1902-1985), especialmente em sua relação com o regime democrático e as formas de resistência por parte dos cidadãos. Pela análise dos principais argumentos do autor a esse respeito, o artigo procura demonstrar a flexibilidade do conceito de Estado do autor e a importância da filosofia enquanto ponto de intersecção entre a moral e o direito, constituindo-se como (...) instrumento de abordagem fenomenológica das formas de associação humana. (shrink)

Political obligation refers to the moral obligation of citizens to obey the law of their state and to the existence, nature, and justification of a special relationship between a government and its constituents. This volume in the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series challenges this relationship, seeking to define and defend the position of critical philosophical anarchism against alternative approaches to the issue of justification of political institutions. The book sets out to demonstrate the value of taking an anarchist approach to (...) the problem of political authority, looking at theories of natural duty, state justification, natural duty of justice, fairness, political institutions, and more. It argues that the anarchist perspective is in fact indispensable to theorists of political obligation and can improve our views of political authority and social relations. This accessible book builds on the works of philosophical anarchists such as John Simmons and Leslie Green, and discusses key theorists, including Rousseau, Rawls, and Horton. This key resource will make an important contribution to anarchist political theory and to anarchist studies more generally. (shrink)

A murder case that had some features in common with the Tarasoff case occurred in Sasebo City, Japan, in 2014. A 15-year-old high school girl was murdered and her 16-year-old classmate was arrested on suspicion of homicide. One and a half months before the murder, a psychiatrist who had been examining the girl called a prefectural child consultation centre to warn that she might commit murder, but he did not reveal her name, considering it his professional duty to keep it (...) confidential. Article 134 of the Japanese Criminal Law states that doctors should not disclose patient information obtained in clinical practice without a legitimate reason, but the Japanese Supreme Court has not specified what constitutes a legitimate reason. Mass media and commentators suggested that the murder could have been prevented if the psychiatrist had disclosed the girl's name to the authorities or had isolated her coercively in a psychiatric ward. However, the authors disagree with such claims. This article discusses obligations imposed on concerned individuals and third party members in cases involving ethical dilemmas regarding patient confidentiality and information disclosure. It is concluded that everyone should fulfill their obligations to prevent such tragedies and one should judge the appropriateness of others’ actions based not on the consequences of their actions, but on the processes used to decide on a course of action and their commitment. It is necessary for us to establish a society in which concerned parties can do what they think is ethically best without fearing ungrounded charges. (shrink)

Why obey the state? Dorota Mokrosińska presents a fresh analysis of the most influential theories of political obligation and develops a novel approach to this foundational problem of political philosophy, an intriguing combination of the elements of natural duty and associative theories. The theory of political obligation developed in the book extends the scope of the contemporary debate on political obligation by arguing that political obligation can be binding even under the jurisdiction of unjust states. The arguments pursued in (...) the book are illustrated with the results of sociological research concerning the reasons that governed people's attitudes to the authoritarian communist regimes in East Europe viz. communist Poland. This book provides the first detailed argument of how a theory of political obligation can apply to subjects of an unjust state. (shrink)

In the United States, disease screening is offered to the public as a consumer service. It has been proposed that the act of “consumption” is a manifestation of agency and that the decision to consume is an exercise of autonomy. The enthusiasm of the American public for disease screening and the expansion in the demand for all sorts of disease screening in recent years can be viewed as an expression of such autonomy. Here, we argue that the enthusiasm for disease (...) screening witnessed in the American public today may be more a reflection of the constraint on autonomy than its facilitation. It is our opinion that the articulation of socio-historical processes has contributed to a moral imperative which is reflected in the decision making of individuals around disease screening. We suggest medical and health professionals have a responsibility to facilitate the exercise of individual autonomy in health care decision making as an integral component of professional obligation. These professionals need to problematise healthcare activities that constrain individual autonomy. (shrink)

Access to abortion services in the United States continues to decline. It does so not because of significant changes in legislation or court rulings but because fewer and fewer physicians wish to perform abortions and because most states now have "conscientious objection" legislation that makes it easy for physicians to refuse to do so. We argue in this paper that physicians have an obligation to perform all socially sanctioned medical services, including abortions, and thus that the burden of justification lies (...) upon those who wish to be excused from that obligation. That is, such persons should have to show how requiring them to perform abortions would represent a serious threat to their fundamental moral or religious beliefs. We use current California law as an example of legislation that does not take physicians' obligations into account and thus allows them too easily to declare conscientious objection. (shrink)

On Obligations was written by Cicero in late 44 BC after the assassination of Julius Caesar to provide principles of behaviour for aspiring politicians. It explores the apparent tensions between honourable conduct and expediency in public life, and the right and wrong ways of attaining political leadership. The principles of honourable behaviour are based on the Stoic virtues of wisdom, justice, magnanimity, and propriety; in Cicero's view the intrinsically useful is always identical with the honourable. Cicero's famous treatise has (...) played a seminal role in the formation of ethical values in western Christendom. Adopted by the fourth-century Christian humanists, it beame transmuted into the moral code of the high Middle Ages. Thereafter, in the Renaissance from the time of Petrarch, and in the Age of Enlightenment that followed, it was given central prominence in discussion of the government of states. Today, when corruption and conflict in political life are the focus of so much public attention, On Obligations is still the foremost guide to good conduct. (shrink)

The problem of political obligation may roughly be characterized as the philosophical challenge of establishing that there is a general obligation to obey the law as such. In this paper, I defend the recognitional account of political obligation, which consists of the following three claims: (i) citizens of a liberal polity have obligations to recognize one another as free and equal moral members of their own political community and communicate this recognition; (ii) under certain conditions, having respect for the (...) law of one’s own state is a crucially important way of affording and communicating such recognition, and so we are obliged as citizens to have such respect under those conditions; and (iii) being obligated to have respect for the law entails having a general obligation to obey it. Taken jointly, these claims show how the following three concepts—political recognition, respect for law, and political obligation—are united in a normative nexus that yields a demanding but deeply attractive interpersonal ideal for political life. I then characterize some forms of “meta-skepticism” about political obligation that question the concept’s importance for political philosophy. I conclude by arguing that one virtue of the recognitional account is that it justifies a philosophical interest in political obligation even if these meta-skeptical views are true. (shrink)

Should we restore degraded nature, and if so, why? Environmental theorists often approach the problem of restoration from perspectives couched in much broader debates, particularly regarding the intrinsic value and moral status of natural entities. Unfortunately, such approaches are susceptible to concerns such as the baseline problem, which is both a philosophical and technical issue related to identifying an appropriate restoration baseline. Insofar as restoration ostensibly aims to return an ecosystem to a particular baseline state, and depends upon clearly (...) identifying this baseline for success, the very project of restoration appears impossible to get off the ground. Recasting environmental restoration in terms of obligations, instead of status, value, or worth, can avoid this and other classic challenges. If obligations to restore nature follow from intersubjectively validated reasons to justify our actions, we can salvage restoration from the threat of the baseline problem. (shrink)

In the first section the problem of political obligation is motivated, and in Section 2 the core structure of the problem is laid bare. A recognition ofthis structure prompts reflection that the problem will appear very different to different thinkers, depending on their moral theories. It also invites the speculation that the problem will be incapable of solution on some moral theories while trivial on others. This polarity does reflect the state of much of the literature until fairly recently. (...) However this picture is seen to be too crude, and in the third section it is shown how an interesting solution has been proposed by advocates of the ‘theory of fairness’. In Section 4 this theory is evaluated, concentrating particularly on George Klosko’s version, which is, in part, rejected. However it is argued that no version of the theory is able to guarantee universal political obligations. In Section 5 it is argued that this is an unnoticed advantage of the theory, for it may well be that, morally at least, we should allow those who do not benefit from the existence of the state to escape political obligations. The consequences of this view are examined and found not to be as threatening as they might first have appeared. (shrink)

The obligation of judges to uphold rules of positive law and possibly conflicting ethical values in context: The case of criminalization of homelessness in Hungary This article examines the tension between the constitutional obligation of judges to uphold rules of positive law and possibly conflicting standards of conduct arising from professional-ethical values. The theoretical analysis will be illustrated by the case of Hungary, an EU member state experiencing rule of law challenges since 2010 and where the 2018-2019 criminalization of (...) homelessness exemplifies the studied tension. Inspired by the theories of Philip Selznick and Martin Krygier, rule of law will be viewed as a value that requires progressive realization and context-specific implementation. By contextualizing the relevant Hungarian constitutional framework with the content of the judicial code of ethics and judicial practice, it will be shown how the legitimate space for Hungarian judges to distance themselves from legislation possibly in conflict with rule of law values is reduced. Theoretical suggestions for addressing such rule of law regressions will be made. (shrink)

Natural duty theorists of political obligation try to base a moral duty to obey the law on some natural duty, such as the duty to promote justice. Their critics say they confront an insurmountable obstacle in the particularity problem: Since natural duties do not bind us to some persons and institutions more strongly than to others, they cannot support a duty to one particular state or society. I solve the particularity problem, by developing a version of the political obligation (...) thesis, giving a natural duty argument for it and showing that the particularity problem does not arise for the argument. I reply to some likely objections to my view. (shrink)

Current scholars generally view political obligations as "content independent." Citizens have moral reasons to obey the law because it is the law, rather than because of the content of different laws. However, this position is subject to criticism on both theoretical and practical grounds. The main consideration in favor of content independence, the so-called "self-image of the state," does not actually support it. Properly understood, the state's self-image is to comply with laws because of the underlying moral (...) reasons that justify them, rather than because they are laws. Because content independence has played a central role in the widespread belief that a suitable theory of political obligation is not possible, rejecting it allows the possibility of a theory that establishes moral requirements for virtually all citizens to behave in accordance with virtually all laws, although these requirements are particular to different laws, and subjects are not required to obey them because they are laws. (shrink)

An enduring question in political and legal philosophy concerns whether we have a general moral obligation to follow the law. In this paper, I argue that Philip Soper’s intuitively appealing effort to give new life to the idea of legal obligation by characterising it as a duty of deference is ultimately unpersuasive. Soper claims that people who understand what a legal system is and admit that it is valuable must recognise that they would be morally inconsistent to deny that they (...) owe deference to state norms. However, if the duty of deference stemmed from people’s decision to regard the law as valuable as Soper argues, then people who do not admit the value of the state would have no duty as such to defer to its norms. And, more importantly, people who admit the value of the state would have a duty not to defer to particular norms, namely those norms which violate the values that ground their preference for a state. This critique of Soper operates within his parameters by accepting his claim that moral consistency generates reasons to act. Even on those terms, Soper’s defence of legal obligation as a duty of deference is unpersuasive. (shrink)

In the recent debate on political legitimacy, we have seen the emergence of a revisionist camp, advocating the idea of ‘legitimacy without political obligation,’ as opposed to the traditional view that political obligation is necessary for state legitimacy. The revisionist idea of legitimacy is appealing because if it stands, the widespread skepticism about the existence of political obligation will not lead us to conclude that the state is illegitimate. Unfortunately, existing conceptions of ‘legitimacy without political obligation’ are subject (...) to serious objections. In this article, I propose a new conception of ‘legitimacy without political obligation,’ and defend it against various objections that the revisionist idea of legitimacy is either conceptually or morally mistaken. This new conception of legitimacy promises to advance the debates between anarchists and statists by making the task of philosophical anarchists significantly more difficult. (shrink)

Christopher Wellman is the strongest proponent of the natural-duty theory of political obligations and argues that his version of the theory can satisfy the key requirement of ; namely, justifying to members of a state the system of political obligations they share in. Critics argue that natural-duty theories like Wellman's actually require well-ordered states and/or their members to dedicate resources to providing the goods associated with political order to needy outsiders. The implication is that natural-duty approaches weaken (...) the particularity requirement and cannot justify to citizens the systems of political obligation they share in. I argue that the critics’ diagnosis of natural-duty approaches is correct, whereas the proposed implication is false. I maintain that 1) only natural-duty approaches can justify political obligations, and that 2) weakening the particularity requirement contributes to the theory's ability to justify a range-limited system of political obligations among compatriots. (shrink)

Why do people comply with coronavirus disease 2019 public health guidance? This study considers cultural-psychological foundations of variation in beliefs about motivations for such compliance. Specifically, we focused on beliefs about two sources of prosocial motivation: desire to protect others and obligation to society. Across two studies, we observed that the relative emphasis on the desire to protect others as an explanation for compliance was greater in the United States settings associated with cultural ecologies of abstracted independence than in Chinese (...) settings associated with cultural ecologies of embedded interdependence. We observed these patterns for explanations of psychological experience of both others and self, and for compliance with mandates for both social distancing and face masks. Discussion of results considers both practical implications for motivating compliance with public health guidance and theoretical implications for denaturalizing prevailing accounts of prosocial motivation. (shrink)

The principle of fairness is a moral principle which states that individuals are under an obligation to contribute towards beneficial cooperative projects. It has been appealed to in arguing that citizens are obligated to pay for public goods that their government supplies. Yet the principle has faced a number of powerful objections, most notably those of Robert Nozick. In responding to some of these objections, proponents of the principle have placed a number of conditions on its application. However, by doing (...) so, they have reduced the number of public goods that the principle can explain obligations to contribute towards, and consequently limited its relevance to questions of political obligation. I argue here that a more permissive version of the principle, with fewer conditions on its application, will perform equally well in responding to Nozick's objections. This opens up the possibility of a theory of political obligation that relies more heavily on the principle of fairness than has previously been thought possible. (shrink)

This is the first in-depth study of popular attitudes towards political obligations and how these are viewed by the state. Leading political theorist George Klosko provides a full defense of a theory of political obligation based on the principle of fairness, which is widely viewed as the strongest theory of obligation currently available.

This paper presents and defends Kant’s non-voluntarist conception of political obligations. I argue that civil society is not primarily a prudential requirement for justice; it is not merely a necessary evil or moral response to combat our corrupting nature or our tendency to act viciously, thoughtlessly or in a biased manner. Rather, civil society is constitutive of rightful relations because only in civil society can we interact in ways reconcilable with each person’s innate right to freedom. Civil society is (...) the means through which we can rightfully interact even on the ideal assumption that no one ever succumbs to immoral temptation. (shrink)

Among the most popular strategies for justifying political obligations are those that appeal to the principle of fairness. These theories face the challenge, canonically articulated by Robert Nozick, of explaining how it is that persons are obligated to schemes when they receive goods that they do not ask for but cannot reject. John Simmons offers one defense of the principle of fairness, arguing that people could be bound by obligations of fairness if they voluntarily accept goods produced by (...) a cooperative scheme. Simmons, however, thinks that such a theory will do little work in justifying political obligations, since virtually no one voluntarily accepts state goods. This paper attempts to advance just such a theory by arguing that states are in fact genuine cooperative schemes and that Simmons is overly pessimistic in his appraisal of whether the majority of citizens accept the goods provided by their states. (shrink)