Human Persons, Human Rights, and the Distributive Structure of Global Justice
82 Pages Posted: 14 Mar 2012 Last revised: 19 Mar 2012
Date Written: March 5, 2009
Abstract
This Article addresses how to take distribution seriously in transnational legal and policy analysis. It does so by two means, both keyed to the principal ways in which distribution is typically implicated in transnational legal and policy analysis: first, by careful attention to the internal structures of the global welfare functions favored by most economically oriented analysts; and second, by reference to what linguists call the 'cognitive grammar' of non-formal distributive language, a structure that mirrors the structure of distribution itself. Both modes of analysis yield a workable method to test proposed maximization norms for their normative propriety, and an attractive distributive ethic that can serve as a normative touchstone for transnational legal and policy proposals.
Keywords: Human rights, transnational legal policy
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