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President's Dream Colloquium on Justice Beyond National Boundaries
This colloquium is no longer running. You can view recorded web streams and read more about previous public lectures on this page.Spring 2013
Over the last forty years, beliefs about the significance of national boundaries for justice have transformed. Attitudes about the system of sovereign states that have held sway since the seventeenth century are being displaced, and the moral and legal significance of national boundaries is increasingly called into question.
Under the influence of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, many of the wealthiest North American philanthropists now focus on global issues. This is in stark contrast to the philanthropic practices that prevailed during the preceding century. This shift in the culture of giving attests to the widespread popular interest that now surrounds issues of global justice.
The notion that relations of justice extend beyond the state is fuelled in part by recognition that processes that are causally responsible for people's well-being are distributed across state boundaries. The spread of infectious diseases is one example. The effects of human-caused climate change is another.
There is growing appreciation that these harms present collective action problems whose resolution will require an equitable distribution of the benefits and burdens of cooperation among all human beings. Yet at present, a fully worked account of a global theory of justice remains elusive. The aim of this colloquium is to bring into sharper focus the issues that a credible theory of global justice must address.
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