A Law of Peoples

Rawls's liberal conception of a law of peoples is designed to explain how politically liberal societies, which are presumed to be well ordered, can coexist with comparatively illiberal, or as Rawls puts it, well-ordered hierarchical societies. It is a particular conception of right and justice that applies to the principles and norms of international law and practice. In Rawls's formulation (43), societies of each category are agreed that, because societies of the other category have been conferred political legitimacy by their own people and to the degree they are not territorially expansionist, they honor basic human rights and are on that account to be tolerated as legitimate members of the international community. This conception of what is termed a "law of peoples" is a "problem of extension" for Rawls's idea of justice, inasmuch as his concept of justice in a liberal society, which he describes as a "constructivist" concept of "justice as fairness" (46), has to be set beside political institutions of a hierarchical society that "specify a just consultation hierarchy . . . while their basic socia

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ir own borders. Being reasonable does not settle any specific arguments; the vicissitudes of practical experience always get in the way and cannot be avoided. Freedom of religion, equality of the sexes, and free political association are only the most obvious areas in which a society can be identified as politically liberal or politically hierarchical where the issue of fundamental human rights is concerned. Inevitably, the difficult questions must be asked, such as how it is that a hierarchical society that oppresses women or specific religions or all religions can be admitted to the society of nations or included as a full participant in the law of peoples? This seems especially problematic when Rawls asserts that the law of peoples "is a family of political concepts with principles of right, justice, and the common good, that specify the content of a liberal conception of justice worked up to extend to and to apply to international law" (Rawls 51). Justice, in Rawls's formulation, is fairness. But where the law of peoples is concerned, fairness does not entail the idea of having one nation represent the rights of individuals in other nations. That would involve a "comprehensive" attitude toward individual rights as a governing
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Approximate Word count = 2623
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)