Observation by nonstandard observers (such as cats) has different implications for privacy than observation by ordinary human beings. This seemingly trivial point yields important insights about privacy. Searching for the characteristic that explains this difference reveals that privacy is importantly related to our interest in how others see us, and the derivative interest in controlling the information upon which others’ perceptions are based. This also casts light on the important relationships between privacy, autonomy, and the development of public personae.

Constructivism often expresses a commitment to discursive respect. The paper explores interdependencies between three dimensions of discursive respect, namely, its depth, scope, and purchase. It identifies challenges for constructivist attempts to locate discursive respect in the normative space defined by these dimensions, and considers whether there can be a coherent conception of discursive respect that is plausibly deep, inclusive in scope, and meaningfully rich in purchase. I suggest that locating discursive respect within the matrix of discursive inclusion is a task partly beyond constructivism, especially if discursive respect, or the constitutive discursive standing that it accords, is an important good.

The republican case for workplace democracy (WD) is presented and defended from two alternative means of ensuring freedom from arbitrary interference in the firm—namely, (a) the right to freely exit the firm and (b) workplace regulation. This paper shows, respectively, that costless exit is neither possible nor desirable in either perfect or imperfect labor markets, and that managerial discretion is both desirable and inevitable due to the incompleteness of employment contracts and labor legislation. The paper then shows that WD is necessary, from a republican standpoint, if workers’ interests are to be adequately tracked in the exercise of managerial authority. Three important objections are finally addressed—(i) that WD is redundant, (ii) that it is unnecessary provided that litigation and unionism can produce similar outcomes, and (iii) that it falls short of ensuring republican freedom compared to self-employment.

Mass atrocities are commonly explained in terms of changes in legal or moral norms. This paper examines the role that changes in social norms can play in precipitating or prolonging mass atrocities. I focus specifically on manipulative transformations of social norms. I first distinguish between the manipulative introduction and the manipulative activation of social norms. I then explain how both forms of manipulation can contribute to mass atrocities. Finally, extending a line of thought first suggested by Hannah Arendt, I present a case study of the manipulative introduction and activation of language rules amongst the Nazis during World War Two.

Many suggest that we should look backward and measure the differences among various parties’ past emissions of greenhouse gases to allocate moral responsibility to remedy climate change. Such backward-looking approaches face two key objections: that previous emitters were unaware of the consequences of their actions, and that the emitters who should be held responsible have disappeared. I assess several arguments that try to counter these objections: the argument from strict liability, arguments that the beneficiary of harmful or unjust emissions should pay, and arguments from distributive justice. I argue that none of these successfully justify a backward-looking approach to the temporally remote portion of the climate burden.

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it presents the urgent case of civil war, relatively undertheorized by just war theorists, along with the normative issues that pertain to this type of conflict and its participants specifically. Second, it suggests that this civil war perspective offers fresh support for the traditional “independence thesis”— separating just cause for war from the rules of its conduct—which is often criticized by contemporary moral philosophers.

In this paper I offer a first account of a practice-based conception of normativity for the political domain. This standpoint is used to relocate the most sophisticated normative practices of justification and critique within an experience-based framework, that of the human being as a “normative creature.” I begin by discussing the two major paradigms in political theory, showing that their neglect of this broad framework of normativity is a serious drawback. I then proceed to articulate the central elements of a practicebased account of normativity: the notions of normative practices and normative orders, and an account of the rationality potential of normativity as practice.

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that even if ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory.

This paper discusses the criteria for acceptably holding citizens partly responsible for wrongs their state or its agents commit. Some proposed criteria are not, it argues, appropriately sensitive to the particular coercive relation between state and citizen. Others, which are, conceive of it wrongly and fail to match our judgments about a range of cases. Alternative criteria of breadth and joint authorship, built around Christopher Kutz's account of participation, better match these considered judgments as well as linking them to a more powerful theoretical framework. Understanding citizens' responsibility will mean understanding these criteria more fully.

If there is a “basic structure objection” (BSO) to G.A. Cohen’s incentive critique of Rawls, then there is also a BSO to claims that private racial discrimination thwarts social justice by reducing the opportunity of its targets. In this paper, I take up the debate about the site or purview of justice and discuss it with reference to the case of race. I argue that the dispute about the site of justice has been wrongly understood as a dispute about the substantive requirements of justice instead of as a dispute about where it is appropriate to apply considerations of justice.

This paper investigates individual differences-based income entitlements (entitlements based on people’s contributions, efforts, and needs) in a context of political equality. Three regimes for distributing income are considered: guaranteed basic income (GBI), no guaranteed income (NGI), and guaranteed work opportunities (GWO). Whereas GBI attends to equality while remaining silent on difference and NGI attends to difference while de-emphasizing equality, GWO attends to both difference and equality. Balancing individual differences and political equality is a plausible goal for distributive justice, and the GWO regime seems well suited to accommodate these joint concerns.

It is widely held that the current refugee Convention is inadequate with respect to its specification of who counts as a refugee and in its assignment of responsibility concerning refugees to states. At the same time, there is substantial agreement among scholars that the negotiation of a new Convention would lead states to extricate themselves from previously assumed responsibilities rather than sign on to a set of more desirable legal norms. In this paper, I argue that states should ultimately negotiate a new Convention, but that first they must alleviate the institutional and motivational constraints that make progress currently unattainable.