CIAO DATE: 02/05/08
Ethics & International Affairs
Annual Journal of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
Summer 2007, Vol. 21, No. 2
Editor's Note
Editors' Note
Sometimes change is revolutionary, but more often it tends to be evolutionary. That is why many readers might not even notice that there are a number of changes, both visual and substantive, that distinguish this issue of EIA from those that have come before it.
Essay
The Human Rights Council: A New Era in UN Human Rights Work? (PDF)
Yvonne Terlingen
Kofi Annan did more than any UN secretary-general before him to stress the close link between human rights and peace and security. With the creation of the Human Rights Council, said Annan, "a new era in the human rights work of the United Nations has been proclaimed."
Features
Uganda's Civil War and the Politics of ICC Intervention
Adam Branch
The International Criminal Court's intervention into the ongoing civil war in northern Uganda evoked a chorus of confident predictions as to its capacity to bring peace and justice to the war-torn region. However, this optimism is unwarranted.
Liability and Just Cause
Thomas Hurka
This paper is a response to Jeff McMahan's "Just Cause for War" (Ethics & International Affairs, 19.3, 2005). McMahan holds, as many have, that there is a just cause for war against group X only if X have made themselves liable to military force by being responsible for some serious wrong. But he interprets this liability requirement in a very strict way. He insists (i) that one may use force against X for purpose Y only if they are responsible for a wrong specifically connected to Y; and (ii) that one may use force against an individual member of X only if he himself shares in the responsibility for the wrong.
This paper defends a more permissive, and more traditional, view of just war liability against McMahan's claims. Against (i) it argues that certain 'conditional just causes' such as disarming an aggressor, deterring future aggression, and preventing lesser humanitarian crimes can be legitimate goals of war against X even if X have no specific liability connected to them. Against (ii) it argues that soldiers who have no responsibility for X's wrong may nonetheless be legitimately attacked because in becoming soldiers they freely surrendered their right not to be killed by enemy combatants in a war between their and another state, so killing them in such a war is not unjust. Though initially a criticism of McMahan, the paper makes positive proposals about conditional just causes and the moral justification for directing force at soldiers.
The Inconveniences of Transnational Democracy
Luis Cabrera
Despite some limited moves toward openness and accountability, suprastate policy formation in such bodies as the World Trade Organization remains fundamentally exclusive of individuals within states. This article critiques the "don't kill the goose" arguments commonly offered in defense of such exclusions. It highlights similarities between those arguments and past arguments for elitist forms of democracy, where strict limitations are advocated on the participation of non-elites in the name of allowing leaders to act most effectively in the broad public interest. Advocated here is movement toward a strongly empowered WTO parliamentary body that would be guided in practice by a principle of democratic symmetry, attempting to match input to the increasing impacts of WTO governance. A parliament with co-decision powers broadly similar to those of the European Parliament is offered as a long-term institutional ideal.
Crime and Punishment: Holding States Accountable
Anthony F. Lang, Jr.
Should states be held responsible and punished for violations of international law? The recent ruling by the International Court of Justice that Serbia cannot be held responsible for genocide in Bosnia reflects the predominant international legal position. But, such a position leaves open the possibility that states or non-state agents can never be held responsible for international crimes. This article argues that they can and should be. While most international ethicists and legal theorists reject the punishment of corporate entities such as states, this article argues that certain types of international violations can only be undertaken by states, and, as a result, states must be bear the responsibility for them. Drawing on some neglected strands in international law and political theory, the article sketches a potential institutional framework for the punishment of state crimes, particularly genocide and aggression.
Book Reviews
Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny Cosmopolitanism; Ethics in a World of Strangers
Michael Blake
These two books are the inaugural releases in Norton's Issues of Our Time series, but they are linked by much more than this fact. Each is a measured attack on the cultural separatism prevalent in many academic and policy circles.
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
Clare Chambers
Catharine MacKinnon's fundamental claim is that the violence and abuse routinely inflicted on women by men is not treated with the same seriousness accorded to a human rights violation, or torture, or terrorism, or a war crime, or a crime against humanity, or an atrocity.
Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights
Fiona Robinson
Although the focus of "Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights" is practical, Gould does not shy away from hard theoretical questions, such as the relentless debate over cultural relativism, and the relationship between terrorism and democracy.
A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France
Fonna Forman-Barzilai
Jennifer Pitts asserts that imperialism was not essential to the liberal project, as is so often alleged by its critics, most recently and systematically by Uday Singh Mehta in his important study "Liberalism and Empire".
Law, Politics, and Morality in Judaism
Stuart A. Cohen
This volume of collected essays by Michael Walzer seeks to bring a more concentrated focus on specifically Jewish outlooks regarding three key themes: "Political Order and Civil Society"; "Territory, Sovereignty, and International Society"; and "War and Peace."
The Good Fight: Why Liberals--and Only Liberals--Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again
Marcus A. Roberts
Peter Beinart's new book offers the Democratic Party a "new liberalism," a vision he bases on the party's history of moral leadership and success in combating totalitarianism in the post–World War II era.