Prof. Fraser Prof.

Forst
frasern@earthlink.net forst@em.uni-frankfurt.de
65 Fifth Ave, Room 225 65 Fifth Ave, Room
Office hours: Tues 4:00-6:00pm Office hours:

Transnational Justice
(GPOL6314/GPHI6571, Fall 2005, Wed 4:00 - 5:50pm )

Description
Traditionally, theories of justice have assumed the sovereign nation state as the relevant
frame or context of justice. Today, however, on many pressing issues of justice the
appropriate frame does not coincide with the borders of existing states; the community of
those who raise claims to justice does not coincide with established citizenries. Thus the
discourse of justice needs to be rethought: What is the appropriate context of justice
today? How should the relevant grounds and institutions of justice be reframed? In this
seminar we will consider some contemporary approaches to these questions.

Syllabus

Sept 7 Introduction: Contexts of Justice, Reframing Justice

Sept 14 Liberal Internationalism: Rawls

Required readings:
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1999), entire.

Recommended:
Charles Beitz, “Rawls's Law of Peoples,” Ethics 110, 4 (2000): 669-696,
xerox.

Sept 21 Rawls’s Critics

Required readings:
Thomas Pogge, "The Incoherence between Rawls's Theories of Justice,"
Fordham Law Review LXXII, 5 (2004): 1739-1760, xerox.
Allen Buchanan, “Rawls's Law of Peoples: Rules for a Vanished
Westphalian World,” Ethics 110, 4 (2000): 697-721, xerox.
Andrew Kuper, “Rawlsian Global Justice: Beyond The Law of Peoples to
a Cosmopolitan Law of Persons,” Political Theory 28, 5 (2000): 640-
674, xerox.

Recommended:
Fraser and Forst, Transnational Justice, Fall 2005 2

Simon Caney, “Cosmopolitanism and the Law of Peoples,” Journal of

Political Philosophy 10, 1 (2002): 95-123, xerox.
Charles Beitz, “Part Three: International Distributive Justice,” in his
Political Theory and International Relations, revised edition (Princeton
University Press 1999), pp. 125-176.

Sept 28 Who Counts? Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism

Required readings:
David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford UP: 1995), ch. 3, xerox.
Onora O’Neill, “Scope: Agents and Subjects: Who Counts?” in O’Neill,
Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical
Reasoning (Cambridge UP, 1996), pp. 91-121, xerox.
Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity,
2002), chs. 5 and 7.
Charles Beitz, "Social and Cosmopolitan Liberalism," International
Affairs 75 (1999), 515-529, xerox.

Oct 5 Just Membership

Required readings:
Michael Walzer, “Membership,” in his Spheres of Justice (NY: Basic
Books, 1983), xerox.
Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), selections TBA.
Will Kymlicka, "Territorial Boundaries. A Liberal-Egalitarian
Perspective," in Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives,
ed. David Miller and Sohail H. Hashmi (Princeton University Press,
2001), xerox.
Joseph H. Carens, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders,” in
Theorizing Citizenship, Ronald Beiner, ed. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
1995), 229-255, xerox.

Oct 12 no class

Oct 19 Beyond Territoriality?

Required readings:
F. Whelan, “Prologue: Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem,” in
Liberal Democracy: Nomos XXV, ed. J. R. Pennock and R. W. Chapman
(New York and London: New York University Press, 1983), pp. 13-47,
xerox.
Thomas Pogge, “How to Create Supra-National Institutions
Democratically: Some Reflections on the European Union’s Democratic
Deficit,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 5 (1997): 163-182.
James Rosenau, “Frontiers,” in Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign
Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World, (Cambridge
University Press, 1997), pp. 3—11, xerox.
Fraser and Forst, Transnational Justice, Fall 2005 3

John G. Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in

International Relations,” International Organization, 47 (1993): 139-
74, xerox.

Recommended:
Thomas Baldwin, “The Territorial State,” in Jurisprudence, Cambridge
Essays, ed. H. Gross and T. R. Harrison (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1992), pp. 207-230, xerox.
Raul C. Pangalangan, “Territorial Sovereignty: Command, Title, and
Expanding the Claims of the Commons,” in Boundaries and Justice:
Diverse Ethical Perspectives, ed. David Miller and Sohail H. Hashmi
(Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 164-182, xerox.

Oct 26 Development in a Global Frame

Required readings:
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Introduction, chs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
12

Recommended:
Martha Nussbaum, Beyond the Social Contract: Toward Global Justice,
Tanner Lectures 2002/03, Lecture 2, “Beyond National Boundaries:
Capabilities and Global Justice,” xerox.

Nov 2 Postnational Deliberative Democracy: From Dahl to Habermas

Required readings:
Robert A. Dahl, "Democratic Dilemma: System Effectiveness versus
Citizen Participation," Political Science Quarterly, 109 (1994): 23-34.
Jürgen Habermas, “The Postnational Constellation and the Future of
Democracy,” in Habermas, The Postnational Constellation: Political
Essays, trans, & ed. Max Pensky (MIT Press, 2001).
Jürgen Habermas, “Does the Constitutionalisation of International Law
Still Have a Chance,” in Habermas, The Divided West (Polity Press,
forthcoming), xerox.

Recommended:
Jürgen Habermas, “The European Nation-State: On the Past and Future of
Sovereignty and Citizenship,” Public Culture vol. 10, no. 2 (1998): 397-
416, xerox.

Nov 9 Cosmopolitan Democracy: Held and Bohman

Required readings:
David Held, Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the
Washington Consensus (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), selections
TBA.
Fraser and Forst, Transnational Justice, Fall 2005 4

James Bohman, "Constituting Humanity: Democracy, Human Rights, and

Political Community," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming,
xerox.
James Bohman, "The Democratic Minimum: Is Democracy a Means to
Global Justice?", Ethics and International Affairs 18 (2004), xerox.
James Bohman, “From Demos to Demoi: Democracy across Borders,”
Ratio Juris 18,3 (2005): 293-314

Nov 16 Global Justice: Pogge

Required readings:
Thomas W. Pogge, "Priorities of Global Justice", in Pogge (ed.), Global
Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 6-23.
Thomas W. Pogge, “The Influence of the Global Order on the Prospects
for Genuine Democracy in the Developing Countries,” Ratio-Juris, 14,
3 (2001): 326-343.
Thomas W. Pogge, World and Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan
Responsibilities and Reforms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), chs. 4, 6,
Thomas W. Pogge, “An Egalitarian Law of Peoples.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 23, 3 (1994): 195-224, xerox.

Nov 23No class

Nov 30Transnational Justice: Forst

Required readings:
Rainer Forst, "The Basic Right to Justification: Toward a Constructivist
Conception of Human Rights," Constellations 6, 1 (1999), 35-60, xerox.
Rainer Forst, “Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice,” in
Global Justice, ed. Thomas Pogge (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
2001), pp. 169-187, xerox.
Rainer Forst, “Justice, Morality and Power in the Global Context,” in Real
World Justice, ed. Andreas Follesdal and Thomas Pogge (Dordrecht:
Springer, 2005), 27-36, xerox.

Recommended:
Rainer Forst, Contexts of Justice. Political Philosophy beyond Liberalism
and Communitarianism, tr. J. Farrell (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2002), ch. 5.

Dec 7 Postwestphalian Democratic Justice: Fraser

Required readings:
Nancy Fraser, Reframing Justice: The 2004 Spinoza Lectures
(Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 2005), entire.
Nancy Fraser, “Abnormal Justice,” unpublished ms., electronic

Books
The following books may be purchased at Barnes & Noble:
Fraser and Forst, Transnational Justice, Fall 2005 5

Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Nancy Fraser, Reframing Justice: The 2004 Spinoza Lectures (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum,
2005).
Jürgen Habermas, The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays, trans, & ed. Max
Pensky (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2001).
David Held, Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington
Consensus (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004).
Thomas W. Pogge, World and Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan
Responsibilities and Reforms (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002)
Global Justice, ed. Thomas W. Pogge (Blackwell, 2001)
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999)
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (Anchor Books, 1999)

Electronic files will be circulated by email. Xeroxed material is available for purchase at
East Side Copy Center and on Reserve at Fogelman Library.

Requirements
1. Regular attendance.

2. Participation in seminar discussions.

3. A written seminar presentation framing the discussion for one of the reading
assignments. The presentation should distill the main arguments of the reading and
formulate an agenda of critical questions for class discussion. It is to be distributed by
email to all members of the seminar by no later than 12 noon on the Monday prior to the
class meeting.

4. A 1-2 page prospectus for a term paper on a topic of your choice. Due Nov 16.

5. A term paper of approximately 15 pages (double-spaced), following the plan of an

approved prospectus. Due Dec 23.

NB: No late papers will be accepted and no incompletes will be given without a
valid medical excuse.