Alyssa Bernstein

Ohio University

“Democratization as an Aim of Intervention: Rawls's Law of Peoples on Just War, Human Rights, and Toleration”

Rawls's Law of Peoples is an interesting and important conception of the moral principles that would constitute the basis of a just system of international political and legal institutions and practices.  In it Rawls presents arguments (or essential elements of arguments) for the following two claims, among others:  (1) There is a set of basic human rights possessed by all individuals to which correspond moral duties on the part of all governments, which the international community may legitimately enforce regardless of whether countries have legally committed themselves to respect and secure these rights. (2) The aim of democratizing a country (as distinct from the aim of securing its people's basic human rights) is not a morally acceptable justifying reason for using military force against it.  In this paper I briefly discuss Rawls's arguments for these two claims, focusing on political rights and religious liberty.  I rebut objections made by various liberal critics.  And I briefly indicate what I see as the most vulnerable points of Rawls's arguments, namely, (a) certain empirical premises stating judgments he made on the basis of findings by historians and social scientists, and (b) the inclarities in his usage of the terms 'human rights' and 'basic human rights.'  Since those empirical premises are plausible and the terminological inclarity is remediable, I argue that Rawls's Law of Peoples is defensible and worth defending.