Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls

Chapter 6: Rawls on International Justice

In Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (2006), Martha Nussbaum advances a feminist critique of Rawls’s theory of international justice. While she identifies herself as a student of Rawls and dedicates the book to his memory, Nussbaum seeks to show the insufficiency of his theory of international justice, particularly as found in his LP, when it comes to defending the rights of women in developing countries. She contends that this insufficiency is mainly due to his use of social contract theory, and its attendant concepts of basic human rights, nationality, and the public-private distinction. In contrast, she offers an alternative human rights approach to global justice: the capabilities approach. The capabilities approach seeks to establish and defend a just and robust standard of human development across nation-states. While the capabilities approach 6 Rawls on International Justice Eileen Hunt Botting 18442-Abbey_FemInterp_Rawls.indd 115 18442-Abbey_FemInterp_Rawls.indd 115 7/25/13 9:43 AM 7/25/13 9:43 AM 116 Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls gives Nussbaum an edge over Rawls in making strong, universalistic critiques of unjust patriarchal, religious, and familial practices toward women in developing nations, it runs the risk of seeming imperial and appearing as though it seeks to impose “Western” and “feminist” values on such nations. For this reason, the universalistic language of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is more valuable for defending women’s human rights in situations of minimum cultural or religious conflict. Because of his stricter commitment to tolerating a reasonable pluralism of values across nations, Rawls’s basic human rights approach is more useful for defending women’s human rights in situations of cultural or religious conflict. Moreover, Rawls provides an argument for the just emergency use of military force to defend women’s human rights, a hard case of which Nussbaum’s theory steers clear. Through the comparison of their theories of justice, both Rawls’s and Nussbaum ’s human rights approaches emerge in different ways as useful resources for advancing feminist values in international and transnational relations. International Justice in Rawls Rawls begins LP with a statement of the book’s purpose, namely, to defend “a particular political conception of right and justice that applies to the principles and norms of international law and practice” (3). He proceeds to define the scope of his theory of international relations, stating that this “Law of Peoples” applies to the members of the “Society of Peoples,” who follow its principles in relation to one another and other types of nations (3). This “Society of Peoples” includes peoples with liberal constitutional democracies as well as nonliberal “decent” peoples. He specifies one type of decent peoples, “decent hierarchal peoples,” which he defines as those nonliberal, nonimperial nations that at least meet a minimum threshold in respecting basic human rights, including women’s rights, and in consulting their people in political decisions made within a hierarchal political structure (4). Rawls outlines a two-step philosophical process for the extension of liberal political principles to the law of peoples adopted by liberal and decent peoples. Using social contract theory as his guide, he envisions a hypothetical two-stage social contract. The first stage reaches agreement on principles of justice to govern the basic structure (the political and economic life) of a liberal people. As described in TJ and PL, a liberal people comes to accept two principles of justice—known as “justice as fairness”— that are generated from a thought experiment. 18442-Abbey_FemInterp_Rawls.indd 116 18442-Abbey_FemInterp_Rawls.indd 116 7/25/13 9:43 AM 7/25/13 9:43 AM Rawls on International Justice 117 In this first-stage thought experiment, or OP, a set of free, equal, rational , self-interested, mutually disinterested parties deliberate about justice behind a “veil of ignorance” that screens out knowledge of their social positions, natural advantages, comprehensive doctrines (complex metaphysical and religious worldviews), and the distribution of wealth in their society (TJ, 12). This “veil” allows for fair and risk-averse deliberation about principles of justice for the basic structure of a liberal society, because it prevents the parties from making decisions that are partial to their own cases. Behind the veil, the parties deliberate about which principles of justice would serve their liberal society’s commitment to the values of freedom and equality. They decide on two: the first principle protects everyone’s equal right to civil and political liberties that are compatible with...