Cosmopolitan Justice and Rightful Enforceability

The liberal debate on global justice has long been polarized between cosmopolitans, who champion global equality, and statists, who defend global sufficiency. Interestingly, little attention has been given to what these outlooks have in common: a focus on justice. Justice differs from other types of values in that it sets out rightfully enforceable entitlements. Once this is appreciated, however, cosmopolitanism and statism can be shown to offer inadequate accounts of global justice. Since the principles they advocate are reasonably contested, directly enforcing them on dissenting others would violate the liberal commitment to equal respect for persons. When the demands of justice are reasonably disagreed upon, as they are at the global level, conflicts over them need to be procedurally adjudicated. The chapter concludes that taking the enforceability of justice seriously leads us to advocate global outcome sufficiency, and global procedural equality, thereby steering a middle course between statism and cosmopolitanism.