Calls for redress of historical wrongs regularly make headlines around the world. People dispute the degree to which justice should be concerned with righting past wrongs, with some arguing that justice should be primarily focused on claims arising from present disadvantage. Proponents and sceptics of restitution, compensation, and other forms of historical redress have engaged with the thesis that historical injustice can be superseded, the idea that changing circumstances following historical injustices can alter what justice later requires. The "supersession thesis," developed by legal and political philosopher Jeremy Waldron, has been challenged, both conceptually and in terms of its possible application and implications. This is the first book to critically assess how the supersession thesis might be reconstructed, challenged, or applied to empirical cases, with an eye toward larger questions surrounding the temporal orientation of justice. Cases examined include Indigenous peoples, linguistic injustice, and climate change. The edited volume includes contributions by established and junior scholars from philosophy, law, American Indian Studies, and political science, who draw from Indigenous thought, settler colonial theory, liberalism, theories of historical entitlements, and structural injustice theories. It concludes with a reply by Jeremy Waldron. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

The essays selected for this volume show how relations between past, current and future generations have become a major subject of philosophical research since the 1970s. The relations between people alive today with people who may exist in the future and people now deceased, differ from relations between contemporaries and in ways that raise new conceptual, logical and substantive questions. Among the questions addressed in this volume are: what is the status of people now deceased and people who may exist in the future? Can the latter be harmed by the actions of people alive today? What duties of justice do we have towards people with whom we can neither interact nor co-operate, and can people who are indirect victims of past injustices legitimately claim compensation? Answers to these questions are relevant in a number of policy areas, most notably in issues regarding reparations for historical injustice and responding to climate change and its consequences.

This volume investigates who can be considered responsible for historical emissions and their consequences, and how and why this should matter for the design of a just global climate policy. The authors discuss the underlying philosophical issues of responsibility for historical emissions, the unjust enrichment of the earlier developed nations, and questions of transitional justice. By bringing together a plurality of perspectives, both in terms of the theoretical understanding of the issues and the political perspectives on the problem, the book also presents the remaining disagreements and controversies in the debate. Providing a systematic introduction to the debate on historical emissions and climate change, this book provides an unbiased and authoritative guide for advanced students, researchers and policymakers in climate change justice and governance, and more widely, for anyone interested in the broader issues of global justice.

Do states or individuals stand under duties of international justice to people who live elsewhere and to other states? How are we to assess the legitimacy of international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations Security Council? Should we support reforms of international institutions and how should we go about assessing alternative proposals of such reforms? The book brings together leading scholars of public international law, jurisprudence and international relations, political philosophers and political theorists to explore the central notions of international legitimacy and global justice. The essays examine how these notions are related and how understanding the relationships will help us comparatively assess the validity of proposals for the reform of international institutions and public international law.

The volume brings together a collection of original papers on some of the main tenets of Joseph Raz's legal and political philosophy: Legal positivism and the nature of law, practical reason, authority, the value of equality, incommensurability, harm, group rights, and multiculturalism.

Is it fair to leave the next generation a public debt? Is it defensible to impose legal rules on them through constitutional constraints? From combating climate change to ensuring proper funding for future pensions, concerns about ethics between generations are everywhere. In this volume sixteen philosophers explore intergenerational justice. Part One examines the ways in which various theories of justice look at the matter. These include libertarian, Rawlsian, sufficientarian, contractarian, communitarian, Marxian and reciprocity-based approaches. In Part Two, the authors look more specifically at issues relevant to each of these theories, such as motivation to act fairly towards future generations, the population dimension, the formation of preferences through education and how they impact on our intergenerational obligations, and whether it is fair to rely on constitutional devices.