Human Rights, Liberalism, and Rawls's Law of Peoples

Abstract

John Rawls’s framework for international justice fails to provide an effective defense of human rights due to an inherent tension between liberal toleration and the enforcement of universal moral standards. By transitioning the primary subject of justice from individuals to “peoples,” the “Law of Peoples” abandons the egalitarian principles fundamental to domestic justice, such as the difference principle and equal liberty. This shift aims to accommodate non-liberal but “decent” hierarchical societies, yet it results in an unprincipled compromise that weakens the normative force of human rights. The justification for these rights within the model relies upon a substantive “precondition” for entering the international original position—specifically, the possession of an “associationist” conception of justice. However, this precondition is philosophically unstable; it is either stipulative, lacks a procedural rationale, or renders the contract argument circular. Furthermore, attempts to ground the legitimacy of non-liberal regimes in a right to emigrate fail unless that right is made effective, a condition that would ultimately necessitate the imposition of universal liberal standards. Consequently, the framework faces a fundamental dilemma: it must either impose liberal values on non-consenting societies or concede that it lacks sufficient grounds for demanding the global protection of human rights. The collapse of the associationist defense suggests that a robust international legal order cannot be achieved without the very liberal impositions the model seeks to avoid. – AI-generated abstract.