Justice in International Relations

Abstract

The question with which we are concerned is how far the state is necessary or sufficient or even relevant as a constituency of human justice. If answers to this question are considered as forming a continuum, at one end all questions of justice are seen as having meaning only within the state. The state is co-extensive with the special relations and obligations existing between members of a particular society, and as giving unique legal sanction to those relations; or the state is the political expression of national self-determination; or it represents in some other way the rights and interests of its people. At the other end of the continuum, questions of human rights, distributive justice and even self-determination have an independent value irrespective of whether they arise within the state or are considered globally.