The Law of Peoples

Overview

The Law of Peoples, published in 1999, is John Rawls's final major work and the culmination of his lifelong effort to develop a systematic theory of justice. While A Theory of Justice (1971) addressed justice within a single democratic society, and Political Liberalism (1993) addressed the question of legitimacy and stability under conditions of reasonable pluralism, The Law of Peoples extends Rawls's framework to the international domain. It asks what principles should govern the relations among peoples, and whether a just and peaceful international order is possible.

The book is a work of ideal theory: it describes the principles that would govern a perfectly just international society, before considering how to apply those principles to the non-ideal conditions of the actual world. Rawls's central innovation is to treat "peoples" rather than states as the fundamental units of international society, and to argue that the principles of international justice must be acceptable to both liberal and "decent" non-liberal societies. The result is a liberal foreign policy that aims to create a permanently peaceful and tolerant international order.

Author Context

John Rawls (1921-2002) is widely regarded as the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century. The Law of Peoples represents the final stage of a philosophical project that had occupied him for more than four decades. The book grew out of a lecture first delivered in 1993 and reflects Rawls's engagement with the problems of international justice, human rights, and the conditions of global peace. It is the work of a philosopher who had witnessed the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, and who sought to articulate a vision of international order that could command the allegiance of diverse peoples.

Historical Background

The Law of Peoples was published in the aftermath of the Cold War, a period of optimistic speculation about the possibility of a new world order based on liberal democracy, human rights, and international law. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the expansion of NATO, and the growing influence of international institutions seemed to create new possibilities for international cooperation. At the same time, the 1990s witnessed genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, the persistence of global poverty, and the emergence of new forms of political violence that raised urgent questions about the limits of international toleration.

Rawls was also responding to a growing literature on global justice, particularly the work of cosmopolitan theorists who argued that the principles of justice should apply to all individuals regardless of national boundaries. Rawls's approach in The Law of Peoples is explicitly anti-cosmopolitan: he argues that the principles of international justice are different from the principles of domestic justice, and that the demands of justice between peoples are more limited than the demands of justice within a single society.

Key Ideas

Peoples, Not States

Rawls's first innovation is to distinguish between peoples and states. Peoples are not merely states by another name: they are characterized by a common sympathy among their members, a shared political culture, and a commitment to a just constitutional order. Unlike the traditional conception of the state, peoples are not motivated primarily by power or self-interest but by a concern for the justice of their own institutions and a respect for the legitimate interests of other peoples. This distinction is crucial because it allows Rawls to argue that liberal and decent peoples can be trusted to abide by principles of international justice, whereas traditional states, driven by power politics, cannot.

The Eight Principles

From an international original position — a veil of ignorance in which representatives of peoples do not know the size, population, or power of the societies they represent — Rawls derives eight principles of the law of peoples:

1. Peoples are free and independent, and their freedom and independence are to be respected by other peoples.
2. Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings.
3. Peoples are equal and are parties to the agreements that bind them.
4. Peoples are to observe a duty of non-intervention.
5. Peoples have the right of self-defense but no right to instigate war for reasons other than self-defense.
6. Peoples are to honor human rights.
7. Peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions in the conduct of war.
8. Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavorable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime.

Liberal and Decent Peoples

Rawls distinguishes between five types of societies: reasonable liberal peoples, decent peoples, outlaw states, burdened societies, and benevolent absolutisms. The law of peoples applies in the first instance to liberal and decent peoples. A decent people is a non-liberal society that nevertheless respects basic human rights, provides its members with a meaningful voice in political decision-making through a consultation hierarchy, and is not aggressive toward other societies. The inclusion of decent peoples is Rawls's most important innovation: it reflects his commitment to toleration in international affairs and his rejection of the view that only liberal societies can be legitimate members of the international community.

Human Rights and International Toleration

Rawls's account of human rights is deliberately minimal. Human rights, for Rawls, are a special class of urgent rights that are necessary conditions for a society's decency. They include the right to life, to liberty, to personal property, and to formal equality before the law, but they do not include the full range of liberal democratic rights. This minimalism is intentional: Rawls wants the law of peoples to be acceptable to both liberal and decent societies, and a more expansive account of human rights would exclude decent societies from the international consensus.

Key Themes

The central theme of The Law of Peoples is the possibility of a "realistic utopia" — a vision of international order that is both desirable and achievable given the limits of human nature and political possibility. Rawls argues that a just and peaceful international order is possible if liberal and decent peoples organize themselves according to the principles of the law of peoples and work together to assist burdened societies and to contain outlaw states.

A second major theme is the limits of international justice. Rawls argues that there is no global basic structure comparable to the domestic basic structure, and therefore no global principle of distributive justice. The duty of assistance — the eighth principle — requires wealthy peoples to help burdened societies establish just or decent institutions, but it does not require the elimination of global economic inequality as such. This position has been the subject of extensive criticism from cosmopolitan theorists who argue that Rawls's approach is insufficiently attentive to global poverty and structural injustice.

Philosophical Meaning

The philosophical meaning of The Law of Peoples lies in its attempt to reconcile liberal universalism with respect for cultural and political diversity. Rawls insists that liberal societies must tolerate decent non-liberal societies, even though those societies do not share all of the liberal commitment to individual rights and democratic governance. This toleration is not a matter of indifference but a recognition that there are multiple reasonable ways of organizing political life, and that liberal societies do not have the right to impose their institutions on others.

The book also represents Rawls's final statement on the relationship between justice and stability. In the international domain, as in the domestic domain, Rawls argues that a just order must be stable for the right reasons — it must be supported by the reasoned allegiance of those who live under it, not merely by a balance of power. The law of peoples is designed to be a focus of an overlapping consensus among liberal and decent peoples, each of which can endorse it from within its own comprehensive worldview.

Influence

The Law of Peoples has been enormously influential in political philosophy, international relations theory, and debates about global justice. It has been criticized from multiple directions: cosmopolitans such as Thomas Pogge and Charles Beitz argue that Rawls's rejection of global distributive justice is unjustified, while realists argue that his account of peoples is naively optimistic about the possibility of international cooperation. Critics have also challenged Rawls's account of decent peoples, arguing that his criteria for decency are too permissive and that the concept of a "consultation hierarchy" does not provide adequate protection for basic rights.

Despite these criticisms, The Law of Peoples remains the most important liberal theory of international justice. Its concepts of peoples, decent societies, and the duty of assistance have shaped the terms of debate about human rights, international toleration, and the ethics of military intervention. The book's vision of a realistic utopia — a world in which liberal and decent peoples live together in peace, each respecting the legitimate interests of the others — continues to inform discussions of the future of international order.