The Law of Peoples: With 'The Idea of Public Reason Revisited'

The book argues that a stable and just international order is possible without a global state and without imposing liberal comprehensive doctrines on all societies [citation:1]. Rawls extends the social contract to a 'Society of Peoples,' asking what principles free and equal peoples—not individuals—would accept to regulate their mutual conduct [citation:11]. The answer is a minimal set of eight principles: independence, treaty observance, equality, non-intervention, self-defense, human rights, war restrictions, and a duty to assist burdened societies [citation:6][citation:10]. This 'realistic utopia' is meant to be both morally defensible and politically feasible.

Decent hierarchical peoples are non-liberal societies that meet specified conditions: they honor basic human rights (life, liberty, property, formal equality), maintain a decent consultation hierarchy in which citizens play a substantial role through associations and groups, and possess a judiciary that provides public justification for its decisions [citation:10][citation:18]. Rawls includes them because excluding them would make the law of peoples parochial—grounded only in liberal premises. By tolerating decent non-liberals, Rawls shows that the international order can be truly pluralist while still excluding 'outlaw states' that violate human rights and wage aggressive war [citation:4].

Rawls draws a crucial distinction between 'basic human rights' and the rights of citizens in a liberal constitutional democracy [citation:11]. The human rights in the Law of Peoples are a special class of urgent rights: freedom from slavery and serfdom, liberty of conscience, and protection from ethnic persecution—but not the full liberal rights to free speech, political participation, or non-discrimination on grounds of sex or religion [citation:4][citation:6]. These rights function to set a minimum standard for decent institutions, justify non-intervention, and establish a limit to reasonable pluralism among peoples [citation:6].

Many critics argue Rawls is too generous to non-liberal states, fearing his theory would shield regimes that commit domestic injustices against their own citizens [citation:15]. Seyla Benhabib and others criticize Rawls for his insensitivity to the ways decent hierarchical societies may still oppress women or restrict religious freedom. A paradoxical criticism comes from the opposite direction: scholars like Chung Hun argue that when properly interpreted, Rawls's 'decent non-liberal societies' turn out to be more than sufficiently liberal, meaning the theory is actually too stringent rather than too generous [citation:15][citation:19].

Rawls rejected extending the domestic difference principle globally because it would presuppose a liberal conception of the person and society that many decent non-liberal peoples would reasonably reject [citation:12]. A global original position among individuals would impose a single comprehensive doctrine of justice on all societies, violating the pluralism that the Law of Peoples is designed to accommodate. Instead, Rawls constructs the original position at the level of peoples, who are represented by their fundamental interests—political independence, security, territory, and self-respect—rather than by a shared individualist premise [citation:10].

The book consists of two parts: the Law of Peoples essay and the companion 'The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,' first published in 1997 [citation:5][citation:11]. The latter explains why the constraints of public reason—reasoning that citizens can reasonably endorse despite their differing comprehensive doctrines—are acceptable to both religious and non-religious citizens [citation:11]. Together, they form the culmination of Rawls's fifty years of reflection on liberalism. The public reason essay addresses the domestic question of how constitutional legitimacy is possible amid pluralism; the Law of Peoples addresses the analogous international question [citation:9].