RESPONSIBILITY AND GLOBAL JUSTICE: A SOCIAL CONNECTION MODEL

Abstract

In this essay I clarify the status of claims about global justice and injustice which are increasingly voiced and accepted in our world. Such claims present a problem for political philosophy because until recently most philosophical approaches to justice assumed that obligations of justice hold only between those living under a common constitution within a single political community. I will argue that the context that generates obligations of justice is social structural processes rather than political institutions. Claims that obligations of justice extend globally for some issues, then, are grounded in the fact that some social structural processes have global reach.