Papers by Patrick Taylor Smith
This paper is both a critical engagement and expansion of Stephen Gardiner’s analysis of the inte... more This paper is both a critical engagement and expansion of Stephen Gardiner’s analysis of the intergenerational storm in The Perfect Moral Storm and other works. In particular, this paper focuses on the Pure Intergenerational Problem (PIP). It follows Gardiner in treating the PIP as a paradigm case in the analysis of intergenerational justice but rejects Gardiner’s claim that the best way to view the PIP is as a coordination problem akin to the Prisoner’s Dilemma or Tragedy of the Commons. Rather, the very elements of the PIP that, according to Gardiner, make it such a pernicious coordination problem— that is, the asymmetric positioning of power and vulnerability between the present and the future—point to an intergenerational domination analysis rather than one of coordination. The paper then goes on to show that a domination analysis has several advantages over one that focuses on coordination, cooperation, and reciprocity. The final section of the paper discusses the objection tha...
This paper uses a novel account of non-ideal political action that can justify radical responses ... more This paper uses a novel account of non-ideal political action that can justify radical responses to severe climate injustice, including and especially deliberate attempts to engineer the climate system in order reflect sunlight into space and cooling the planet. In particular, it discusses the question of what those suffering from climate injustice may do in order to secure their fundamental rights and interests in the face of severe climate change impacts. Using the example of risky geoengineering strategies such as sulfate aerosol injections, I argue that peoples that are innocently subject to severely negative climate change impacts may have a special permission to engage in large-scale yet risky climate interventions to prevent them. Furthermore, this can be true even if those interventions wrongly harm innocent people.
Ethics, Policy & Environment
In this paper, I describe a new normative foundation for statism that is based on freedom as non-... more In this paper, I describe a new normative foundation for statism that is based on freedom as non-domination. Statists argue that we owe distributive equality to our fellow citizens and something less than distributive equality to non-citizens. Coercive statists offer a particular account of this difference, arguing that distributive equality is a specific normative response to being mutually subject to a coercive, legal system. Some have rejected coercive statism as conceptually inadequate, arguing that distributive equality is neither appropriate compensation for being coerced nor does it uniquely override the wrongness of coercion. As a consequence, coercive statism is unmotivated. I show that these objections are based on an assumptionnamely, that coercion is always a pro tanto wrong that must be compensated or overridden-that statists ought to reject. Rather, I argue that distributive equality is necessary to turn dominating political relations into freely cooperative ones. Distributive equality is a way of being free in the face of power and not a means of being compensated for being less free. I then show that once everyone is a member of a non-dominating domestic order, equality between members of different political orders is not necessary to prevent domination and that this appropriately motivates the central statist contention that we owe different obligations of justice to citizens and
Since cyberattacks are nonphysical, standard theories of casus belli-which typically rely on the ... more Since cyberattacks are nonphysical, standard theories of casus belli-which typically rely on the violent and forceful nature of military means-appear inapplicable. Yet, some theorists have argued that cyberattacks nonetheless can constitute just causes for war-generating a unilateral right to defensive military action-when they cause significant physical damage through the disruption of the target's computer systems. I show that this view suffers from a serious drawback: it is too permissive concerning the types of actions that generate casus belli since many essentially peaceful and non-violent mechanisms can nonetheless cause physical damage. I resolve this difficulty by developing a sovereignty based account of casus belli and applying it to cyberwarfare. I argue that legitimate states have a constrained right to unilaterally respond with military force to unfriendly actions that bypass or overwhelm the political deliberations of the target state in order to force a change in behavior. This new account of casus belli avoids the problems of the consequence-based view by plausibly restricting the types of unfriendly action that give rise to casus belli and yet offers an attractive explanation for why some cyberattacks nonetheless do generate a potential right to a unilateral defensive response.
This paper is both a critical engagement and expansion of Stephen Gardiner's analysis of the inte... more This paper is both a critical engagement and expansion of Stephen Gardiner's analysis of the intergenerational storm in The Perfect Moral Storm and other works. In particular, this paper focuses on the Pure Intergenerational Problem (PIP). It follows Gardiner in treating the PIP as a paradigm case in the analysis of intergenerational justice but rejects Gardiner's claim that the best way to view the PIP is as a coordination problem akin to the Prisoner's Dilemma or Tragedy of the Commons. Rather, the very elements of the PIP that, according to Gardiner, make it such a pernicious coordination problemthat is, the asymmetric positioning of power and vulnerability between the present and the future-point to an intergenerational domination analysis rather than one of coordination. The paper then goes on to show that a domination analysis has several advantages over one that focuses on coordination, cooperation, and reciprocity. The final section of the paper discusses the objection that domination is an otiose moral concept in intergenerational contexts because it is inescapable. In order to respond to this worry, the paper suggests a variety of institutional reforms that can help alleviate the problem of intergenerational domination.
This paper argues that discussions of transnational authority are hampered by an equivoca-
Book Reviews by Patrick Taylor Smith
Laura Valentini's Justice in a Globalized World presents, with admirable clarity, a new, hybrid c... more Laura Valentini's Justice in a Globalized World presents, with admirable clarity, a new, hybrid conception of global justice that builds on insights from both cosmopolitans and statists, especially their relational variants. Relational cosmopolitans generally argue that substantial economic cooperation and interdependence (i.e., the relevant economic relations) trigger robust obligations of distributive justice. They then argue that, as a matter of fact, these relations obtain globally in virtue of intensifying global trade, capital flows, and labor migration. Thus, relational cosmopolitans conclude that obligations of distributive justice directly apply to the global economic order. Relational statists, by contrast, argue that obligations of distributive justice are trigged by coercive, political relations. Furthermore, these coercive relations only obtain-and can only be justified-within a state. As a consequence, the global order is a 'secondary site' of justice that ought to be concerned with assisting and protecting legitimate states but does not directly trigger obligations of distributive justice.
Book Chapters by Patrick Taylor Smith
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Papers by Patrick Taylor Smith
Book Reviews by Patrick Taylor Smith
Book Chapters by Patrick Taylor Smith