Theories like Rawls’ generally assume that responsibility

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Courts as well as academic analysis could respond to the fact that extraterritorial components pose limits on climate cases by adopting an ecumenical approach to principles we accept as justification. This would allow for picking whatever principle is most suited while still acceptable in a given case. Beitz (ch 7) and Besson, for example, have already argued that human rights should be understood to be grounded in many principles instead of only one or two. I would like to add another option to this possibility. Perhaps one might argue that in some cases human rights law needs to stand in for lack of a better alternative, say, in the form of an international legal order that takes global justice seriously. On this note I have raised the possibility of reading part of international human rights law precisely to phone number list allow for an entry point to explicitly distributive concerns (see ch 2 here). But explicitly conceptualising international human rights law as a stand-in, to some extent against or over and above its purposes, needs an additional layer of justification. While not the focus of this post, similar arguments would need to be made, I think, regarding human rights obligations in armed conflict.



Currently, most human rights theory to my mind is designed for a world in which relevant agents comply with their duties, and background conditions are generally favourable. This is John Rawls’s definition of ‘ideal theory’ (see here ch 1). Background conditions regarding climate change are not favourable. We are running out of time, there are currently not enough resources to do everything we need to do in order to tackle climate change, and individual redress is mostly absent from international environmental law. In addition, can be allocated and apportioned, and this is a feature international human rights law shares with such theories.