La Sierra University
law and business professor Gary Chartier has proposed in his fifth book a
broadened version of a renowned philosopher’s views of global justice by
treating the interests of particular people across the globe, rather than their
governments, as fundamental.
In his new book Radicalizing Rawls: Global
Justice and the Foundations of International Law, Chartier argues
for a form of justice “in terms of what it means to treat particular people
rather than states fairly,” he said. “Thinking in this way about justice is
compatible with endorsing a model of international law that’s bottom-up rather
than top-down—one in which law is consensual, not imposed by states with
territorial monopolies on law-making and law-enforcing power.”
Radicalizing Rawls was published in February by Palgrave
Macmillan, an international academic and trade publishing company. It expands
upon the theories of political philosopher John Rawls in his influential
work A Theory of Justice, first published in 1971. In Theory and in his 1999 book The Law of Peoples, Rawls presents an account of global
justice as comprising those standards that would be embraced by equal
representatives of societies, or “peoples,” deliberating without knowledge of
their own actual positions in the global order.
Chartier
argues that this approach privileges the dominant actors in particular
societies and gives states priority over particular people. Among the practical
effects of this approach, he argues, are insufficient concern for the
protection of noncombatants during violent conflicts and a willingness to
accept restrictions on immigration—restrictions, Chartier argues, that
contribute dramatically to the persistence of global poverty.
Written intermittently over 13 years, Radicalizing Rawls is intended for scholars and
students of political philosophy and international law. His overarching goal is
to spur the rethinking of key norms of international justice. The book got its
start as a paper for a law school course called “Theories of International
Law.” “I expanded the paper in light of critical comments from journal
reviewers. Then, I incorporated some more recent insights to turn it, perhaps
unexpectedly, into an anarchist tract,” said Chartier. In what may prove to be
the book’s most controversial section, he argues that Rawls’s principles of justice
could be used to defend anarchy— the absence, he emphasizes, not of rules but of rulers—at the global
level.
The Mises Daily, a web-based news publication of the Ludwig von
Mises Institute in Alabama, published a first review of Radicalizing Rawls on March 13. In the review,
philosopher and historian David Gordon challenges aspects of Chartier’s
revision of Rawlsian theory while describing his work as “a book of outstanding
merit [that] confirms his place as one of the best political philosophers of our
time.”
On April 1, New York Times
best selling author Thomas E. Woods Jr., a senior fellow of the Ludwig von
Mises Institute and host of The Tom Woods Show published a review on his web
site blog, tomwoods.com, praising Chartier’s work. He also conducted a
30-minute interview with the author which is also available on Woods’ blog
at tomwoods.com/blog/note-to-libertarian-scholars-heres-how-its-done/. States Woods, “Chartier’s
work is a careful study, not a polemic, and he is generous with his subject
rather than dismissive or condescending. As a result, he has a top publisher
(Palgrave Macmillan), a slate of admiring blurbs from top scholars, and the
satisfaction of having made a significant contribution to political
philosophy.”
Chartier holds a JD from the University of California at Los
Angeles (where he emphasized legal theory and public law) and a Ph.D. in
ethics, theology and the philosophy of religion from the University of
Cambridge, England. In 2010 he was awarded La Sierra University’s triennial
Distinguished Scholarship Award. His byline has appeared some forty times in
journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, and Law and Philosophy.
His work has been the focus of colloquia at the University of Arizona’s Center
for the Philosophy of Freedom and at sessions of the American Philosophical
Association’s Pacific Division. On March 12, 2014, he delivered a lecture and
conducted discussion at Southern Adventist University in Tennessee focused on
his 2011 book, The Conscience of an Anarchist.
At La
Sierra his many services and activities have included coordinating the
“Liberating Markets” lecture series featuring renowned scholars from around the
country. He is also a director of the North American Religious Liberty
Association—West and the Molinari Institute, and a senior fellow of the Center
for a Stateless Society
Chartier’s previous books include Anarchy
and Legal Order, Economic Justice and Natural
Law, The Conscience of an Anarchist, andThe Analogy of Love. With friend and Molinari colleague
Charles W. Johnson, he co-edited Markets Not Capitalism,
which he discussed in a Fox Business Network television interview in December
with host John Stossel.
