Moral Responsibility and Global Justice. A Human Rights Approach

Abstract

Arguing for a dual role of human rights as legal rights and moral standards of legitimacy, Chwaszcza extends their role as normative correctives of the achieved status quo in law and political practice to international relations. How can the normative standing of individuals and collective responsibilities among states be combined? Interpreted as standards of legitimacy for institutions, the concept of human rights offers a fruitful normative heuristic for determining the moral status of individual persons in international relations and for assessing collective responsibilities of transnational justice among political associations. Four areas of moral concern are discussed: peace ethics, humanitarian intervention, poverty relief, and migration.