MUST MILENNIUM DOMES STAND IN THE WAY OF THE MILENNIUM GOALS: On David Miller’s split-level view of domestic and global justice

 

ABSTRACT:

This paper examines David Miller’s reasoning about cases of conflict. It does so from a cosmopolitan perspective which is closest to the split-level view as proposed by Miller, but insists on the priority of global justice. The paper takes the familiar position that global justice requires an international structure of institutions of some kind, under which Miller’s principle of respecting basic human rights is largely satisfied, that erecting such a structure lies within the realm of economic and political feasibility, and that the present institutional structure is highly unjust, when assessed against this principle. The priority claim to be defended from this perspective is that eliminating underfulfillment of basic human rights everywhere is the first and most urgent task of justice at present, and that demands of domestic justice should not stand in the way of achieving that task as soon as possible. This is because domestic justice (at least on a defensible conception of its structure of principles) requires the fulfillment of basic human rights, whatever else it may require over and above that.