Abstract

In The Law of Peoples , Rawls tries to develop a theory of international justice by extending a liberal conception of domestic justice to a society that consists not only of reasonable and well-ordered liberal peoples, but also of decent nonliberal peoples. Within the boundaries set by his theory of political liberalism Rawls hopes to convince us that a reasonably just Society of Peoples might be possible. Such a society, according to Rawls, consists of all those peoples who observe the different ideals and principles of the Law of Peoples in their mutual relations. It is a society that can at least eliminate the ‘gravest forms of political justice’ and prevent new ‘great evils of human history’ from taking place’. The target that Rawls sets for himself is of course very admirable, but one has to remain cautious about the way in which he tries to develop such a political conception of international justice. One has to keep a keen eye on the different steps that take place in the extension of a liberal conception of domestic justice to a reasonably just Law of Peoples. We try to claim that Rawls loses an essential element of international justice in this extension, that is the idea of equal liberty