H05(a) - Justice Across Generations
Date: Jun 2 | Time: 01:30pm to 03:00pm | Location:
Chair/Président/Présidente : ChristopherBennett (University of Waterloo)
Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Elizabeth Finneron-Burns (Western University)
Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Mira Bachvarova (University of New Brunswick)
Session Abstract: Intergenerational justice is swiftly becoming one of the most important areas of investigation within the sub-field of political theory. If normative political theory is to keep pace with political challenges as they arise, that focus is appropriate. Climate change, population and the morality of procreation, personal and sovereign debt, and global inequality are just some of the pressing, interrelated challenges that raise questions of intergenerational justice. This panel brings together scholars working on different dimensions of intergenerational justice, including theoretical work on the intergenerational rights and duties, as well as more applied questions of distributive and institutional justice. What makes intergenerational justice such a fertile area of investigation is that work remains to be done at every level, from the most abstract arguments to basic concepts of intergenerational justice (e.g., intergenerational rights and duties), through specific distributive theories, to applied, institutional questions. The range of papers on this panel is representative of this breadth. Beyond scholarly, collegial objectives related to bringing a group of subject-matter experts to scrutinize each other’s work, the objective in this panel is to combine theoretical and applied work to foster a fruitful, generative conversation that moves between the two, that each avoid losing sight of the other.
Imperfect, Intergenerational Duties: Duties without Rights: Christopher Bennett (University of Waterloo)
Abstract: Much wrangling over the nature of intergenerational justice consists of arguments about the form of intergenerational duties. That is, the majority of contributions on this subject argue about the possibility of intergenerational duties, given how much (or little, depending on the view) is available to ground them. A far smaller number of contributions defend substantive claims.
With that context in mind, I develop two arguments in this paper. First, I argue that this focus on the form of intergenerational duties is misguided in two senses. It is misguided in the sense that contributors often falsely assume that a theory of intergenerational duties much be univocal, containing only one form of such duties. Moreover, it is unwarranted in the sense that the form of duties has relatively few implications for many practical, future-regarding questions. I therefore defend a pluralist approach to intergenerational justice.
Second, draw attention to a previously unnoticed type of intergenerational duties, imperfect intergenerational duties. I extend the concept of imperfect duties to the intergenerational domain and defend this extension with reference to the practical, intergenerational challenges that climate change raises. Imperfect duties are duties without rights: they are duties who specification and normative force does not rest on a corresponding rights claim. Developing this argument therefore depends on the extent to which it can be shown that imperfect duties to have the normative force that perfect duties – duties with corresponding rights – possess.
Sovereign Wealth Funds and Global Justice: Elizabeth Finneron-Burns (Western University)
Abstract: Can intergenerational savings be justified in light of the condition of the current global poor? This question can be asked both within states and across states. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund (commonly known as the Oil Fund), for example, has invested the proceeds from Norway’s oil and gas reserves in order to be used by future members of the Norwegian state. It seems at first a laudable thing for a state to set aside resources for its future members instead of using them up now. However, the alternative is that a rich state like Norway could also use those resources (or the funds earned from selling the resources) to improve the quality of life of those in poor states. As a result, efforts such as Norway’s may be inconsistent with egalitarian, sufficientarian, and especially prioritarian duties of justice as they benefit the better/sufficiently well off (the rich future citizens of Norway) over the worse/insufficiently well off (the current global poor). The counterintuitive conclusion may be that we may not be able to justify state savings for future members of that state, or even state welfare systems unless and until it has discharged its duties of justice towards the poor in other states.
Short-termism, Institutional Capacities and Democratic Protections for the Interests of Future Generations: Mira Bachvarova (University of New Brunswick)
Abstract: Over the last several decades governments around the globe have consistently failed to take sweeping action to address climate change despite near universal agreement on the urgent need to do so in order to avoid or at least mitigate its imminent disastrous impacts. This has led many intergenerational justice theorists to develop proposals for institutional reforms to contemporary democratic systems with the purpose of formally representing and protecting the interests and rights of future generations. The common objective of such reforms is to overcome the “harmful short-termism” (Caney, 2019) that characterizes the policy agenda across current models. The suggested instruments to achieve it have been wide-ranging, including constitutional reforms, improved deliberative mechanisms, and the creation of new oversight bodies (Gonzalez-Ricoy and Gosseries, 2016). In this paper I suggest that while short-termism is indeed significant and insidious, it is not the only and sometimes not even the primary cause of democracies’ failure to protect the interests of future generations. I argue that any meaningful democratic reforms for the benefit of future generations must take into account the great variation in state institutions’ capacities to act in the public interest, constrain private power, and support the kind of global authorities and initiatives needed. Proposed reforms ought to take a two-pronged approach that identifies mechanisms to boost and maintain democratic capacities overtime, in addition to creating checks on short-termism.
The Rights of Future Humans: The Best Test Case for Universality Claims?: Richard Vernon (Western University), Charles Jones (Western University)
Abstract: Whether or not human rights are truly universal has been a contested question at least since the adoption of the Universal Declaration. Contestation has centred on what we may term the spatial dimension: do human rights apply everywhere in the world, despite apparent cultural and ideological diversity, as well as very uneven capacities for implementation? Advocates of human rights have tried to fend off sceptical objections. A much less explored aspect of universality, however, is “temporal”: can human rights be said to apply timelessly as well as globally? Reasons for questioning their universality in that dimension are at least as strong as reasons for questioning their global reach, for ideational diversity over time is surely even greater than the diversity occurring globally at any given point, as well as being inherently less knowable. In this paper, we consider whether the defences of universality developed in the spatial context also apply in the temporal one – perhaps a harder case. We are especially concerned with four possible objections to universality: the relativity of moral and cultural beliefs, the problem of feasibility, the issue of insufficient determinacy, and the question of respective weight, given that the rights of future people would clearly modify the interpretation of our own rights, as living people, and also trump our (non-right-based) interests. In our paper we draw on the philosophical literature on human rights and on the literature on intergenerational justice.