Rawls’s Starting Point

Rawls offers an account of global justice and the grounds of global law expressed in what he calls “the Law of Peoples.”1 Peoples are like states, but they lack some of the more obviously dubious features of states (Part II). It is representatives of peoples whose deliberation in a (two-part) global version of Rawls’s familiar “original position” yields the content of the Law of Peoples; thus, Rawls’s approach treats peoples as basic to a just global order (Part III). Such a Law would contain what Rawls takes to be the most crucial elements of a refined version of current international law (Part IV). The broad category of “well-ordered” peoples includes both liberal peoples and those Rawls calls “decent nonliberal” peoples (Part V). Rawls’s adoption of a people- based approach leads to conclusions that are less appealing from the standpoint of individuals around the globe than a cosmopolitan alternative (Part VI). His entire project, organized around the needs and concerns of peoples, reflects the features of his starting point (Part VII).