Conclusion

Abstract

The defence of the state as the means by which most rights for most people are secured must always depend on the global securing of basic human rights. This is the starting-off point for any theory of international justice, and it follows from our treatment of the priority question between special rights, or those rights peculiar to a particular political society, and basic rights. The conditions for the domestic legitimacy of the state, and therefore of the range of its external justice-claims, only become fully operative in a world where all basic human rights are met. Then the realm of special rights as we have defined them provides a defence of the state as a distinct ethical order, though the continuing priority of basic rights must always deny to the state any pretence to moral autonomy.