Legitimacy, Global Distributive Justice and the Status Quo-Objection

In this paper I should like to examine the foundational methodological question, how standards of global distributive justice might be legitimately justified on an international level, and how they might be put into practice. For that it is necessary for a plausible international political theory to state how, and by whom, global distributive justice is to be brought about. At the same time, I should like to call into question the so-called theories of ‘practice-dependence’, which argue that a political theory capable of yielding properly action-guiding principles has to develop such principles on the basis of an account of existing practices and institutions. I on the other hand should like to argue that the existence of problems of justice and the development of duties of justice do not depend on existing interpersonal actions or on pre-existing institutional circumstances. However, conflicts of injustice cannot and should not be solved either on a morally abstract level or on an ideal level, but require a concrete solution strategy which is at once problem and context-oriented and institutional. In addition, this solution strategy should be able to be accepted in principle and politically implemented by those involved in the injustice in question. The next highest political unit may only intervene on a provisional basis.