Essay Questions. Human Rights and Global Justice. GOVT 3635. Spring, 2012.

Format: 10 page, double spaced essay. (Approximately 2,500 to 2,750 words in length.) Reference style: Any scholarly endnote/footnote style is acceptable. Due date: Hard copy submission, to your TA, by 4:00 pm, April 26. Please choose one of the following questions to serve as your guide as you formulate your own thesis argument. You are strongly urged to consult only the works that have been assigned under the categories of "required reading" and recommended reading in this course for the purposes of writing your essay. You should review the memo on writing political theory essays that is posted on the course BB site for further guidance. You may also consult the model student papers posted on the BB site, but note that plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and that your instructors will be very familiar with these texts. You are responsible for upholding the Cornell Code on Academic Integrity. See the following sites for further information: http://cuinfo.cornell.edu/Academic/AIC.html http://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/index.cfm --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) Who offers the more compelling argument about cosmopolitanism, Held or Keohane? Focus, in particular, on their normative arguments about the goods that we would realize by following their preferred reforms, that is to say, the achievement of global democracy in the case of Held, and the pursuit of global justice without the establishment of a global parliament in the case of Keohane. In your essay, touch on the normative elements found in the readings assigned for Week 12 on migrant children, for Weeks 13 and 15 on torture and the United States, and for Week 27 on global poverty. 2) Do you agree or disagree with Sunstein's critique of subjective welfarism? How can you mobilize the arguments offered by Rawls and Cohen to enrich Sunstein's critique? Does this enrichment make you more or less compelled by Sunstein's argument? 3) Young envisions democracy as a complex process in which a "heterogeneous public" is brought into being, by ensuring a vigorous and diverse exchange of views under good enough conditions, by facilitating a special type of group representation, and by empowering members of oppressed social groups such that their testimony is taken seriously by the privileged. What are the differences between her democratic model, the Cohen-Habermas model, and the Rawlsian model of political liberalism? Which of these three accounts do you find most compelling?

4) How do Fraser and Gordon contribute to our understanding of the politics of social rights? Are you convinced by their critique of the social rights that were established in the US in the context of the New Deal, and their call, in our current context, to engage in a feminist revaluing of socially necessary dependence? 5) Can you find points of agreement, compatibility, and complementarity between Fraser and Gordon's argument about social rights and Rawls's approach to distributive justice? Do the two models, for example, share exactly the same underlying commitments? Alternatively, it may be the case that they value different types of equality; even so, they could be brought together to form a single coherent scheme if they addressed different levels and different sites of socio-economic relations, and recommended complementary types of social change. Or are the two models utterly contradictory in their commitments and incompatible with each other? 6) Consider the three education cases that we are covering in Week 25, Brown, Rodriguez, and Plyler from the perspectives of Rawls and Sen. How did the Supreme Court decide each of these cases? What was the reasoning provided in the majority opinion? How would Rawls and Sen respond to each decision? Of the two thinkers, Rawls and Sen, which one do you believe provides the most compelling approach to the right to education as it is implicated in these cases? Give reasons for your answer, demonstrating your understanding of each thinker's overall argument about justice and equality. [Note to students who have completed GOVT 4435: my apologies, but you are not permitted to select this question, since an essay written in response to this question would introduce an excessive overlap in course material.] 7) In Week 23, Barry reconstructs what he regards as the most attractive version of the libertarian approach to distributive justice. He nevertheless rejects it in the end. Do you find his argument convincing? Give reasons, making use of the works of JS Mill, Sunstein, Rawls and Nozick in your essay. 8) In Week 27, I will deliver a lecture in which I suggest that Pogge and Barry offer fairly similar arguments about the duty of a well-off individual residing in a wealth country to respond to global poverty, with one important exception: Pogge is more skeptical about routing aid through the nationstates located in the developing world. Build a hybrid argument by combining the points made by Pogge and Barry together, but accept Pogges proposal for the channeling of aid through INGOs (international non-governmental organizations). Lets call this hybrid the Barry-Pogge position. Compare and contrast 1) Shues account of moral duties in conditions of extreme scarcity (Week 24) with 2) the BarryPogge position. Do you find both of them compelling? Do you endorse only one and reject the other? Or is it the case that neither one is compelling? Provide an adequate reconstruction of the 1) Shue and 2) Barry-Pogge arguments and then offer your critical assessment, drawing attention to their respective strengths and weaknesses.

Drafted: March 13, 2012.