It is worth distinguishing two issues: anger that another country applies its laws to one of our citizens; and anger that another country ( any country, actually) applies unjust laws to one of our citizens (to anyone , actually). Though your question seems more focused on the former issue, I think you are really more exercised by the latter. You would be very strongly opposed to Australia hanging a "mule" and to Australia punishing a man for having homosexual relations. And you would not be upset, I guess, if an Australian abroad received a punishment you consider just for some culturally specific crime that does not exist in Australia (e.g., having sex with a woman on the basis of a false promise to marry her while knowing that such sex will make her a total and permanent outcast in her community). As it happens, I am also in Australia and saw a poll last night showing that 47% of Australians want the hanging to go ahead, while 46% are opposed to it. I suppose those 47% think it is...

Philosophy can help convince some, as the efforts of writers like Peter Singer, Henry Shue, and Peter Unger have shown. But most people in the more affluent countries have not been moved by their arguments. It is therefore worth thinking about what else philosophy might do in response to the severe deprivations suffered by so many distant strangers. Philosophers might, for example, question or challenge the common assumption that our morally most significant relation to the global poor is that of potential helpers. In this vein, philosophers can explore the relevance of the fact that great affluence here and great poverty there have emerged from one historical process that was deeply pervaded by wrongs and injustices of the most horrific kinds (slavery, genocide, colonialism, etc.). Are we entitled to the highly privileged starting positions this process has bestowed on us in the face of the extremely miserable starting positions of so many others? If our wealth and opportunities are not,...

It makes sense to start with your more general question: What is a (basic) human right? Official documents and public pronouncements typically leave this nebulous by not making explicit who bears what correlative duties to the human rights postulated or invoked. They are typically clearer with regard to the object of any human right -- that which this human right is a right to. Toward making the correlative duties explicit: I think that any human right imposes at least two kinds of duties on other human agents (persons, corporations, organizations, governments, etc.). These are interactional duties: duties not to deprive human persons of the objects of this human right, and institutional duties: duties not to collaborate in imposing on human persons social rules under which some will foreseeably and avoidably lack secure access to the objects of their human rights (unless one also makes compensating efforts to reform the rules or to protect their victims). A specific human right might then be...

One might think that (bad) luck does not exist because the universe is deterministic (running like clockwork according to strict physical laws). I assume this is not your concern. The (bad) luck label might then be attached to things happening to an agent insofar as these things (however causally determined) are better or worse than she could have predicted. In this sense, clearly, luck and bad luck do occur. To be sure, agents will invoke bad luck as an excuse. But this is no reason to reject the very idea of bad luck. After all, such excuses are sometimes valid -- as when the sole copy of your typescript is destroyed by a fire (something that very nearly happened to John Rawls's ATheory of Justice !). And when such excuses are lousy, this can be shown even when bad luck is accepted in principle: We can point out that the outcome was not really worse than the agent could have predicted or that the agent failed to take sufficient account of the risk. For example, we can tell the notorious drunk...

An action should be judged -- as either right or wrong -- neither by its intention nor by its result. For example, John burns down Susan's house while she is away. This action is wrong even if it is well-intentioned (John did this to help her out of her supposed financial difficulties through a large insurance pay-out). And the action is wrong even if it turns out to save Susan's life (while Susan spends the next night elsewhere, the ruins of her house are hit by a meteorite that would otherwise have killed her). We might judge actions in terms other than right and wrong. Focusing on the intention, we might judge whether an action has or lacks moral worth (Kant's phrase). Focusing on the result, we might judge whether an action is, say, valuable. The former judgment is more relevant to assessing the agent than the action. And the latter is remote from a moral judgment because results can depend on many other factors the agent cannot control.

To be able to justify a killing, we must first and foremost be able to justify it to the victim. Here is one idea for how this might work. Suppose you have a number of agreements with your neighbor: borrowing tools, babysitting, having no loud parties after midnight, and so on. If your neighbor does not live up to one of these agreements (never leaves the key to her tool shed at the agreed-to hiding place, for example), then you are justified in ending it. You may do this explicitly, if you have the opportunity. If there is no such opportunity, you may still, when she next comes to borrow a needed tool, decline her request and justify this to her by saying that, once she has broken the agreement, she has forfeited her claim on you to live up to it. The same sort of justification can work for the general duty to honor agreements one has made. If you find that your neighbor tends to break her agreements with you for the sake of any small convenience, then your duty to live up to your agreements...

Let's distinguish cases along the lines of your second sentence. Begin with the least disturbing case, where we have neither contributed to, not benefited from, severe poverty or its causes. Their severe poverty is due to a meteorite, say, and our wealth is well-earned through hard work and good planning and husbanding of resources. In this case, it would surely be immoral to do nothing to help people who are suffering greatly and struggling for the survival of themselves and their families. I do not think there is a clear-cut amount or percentage one ought to give in such a case. The reason is not just that circumstances vary among the more affluent (a millionaire should give a larger percentage than you), but also that the moral assessment is scalar here: On the scale of possible contributions, there is no sharp point demarcating "too little" from "enough" (or "immoral" from "moral"). Even someone who is giving 20 percent of her teacher's income has moral reason to give more (people are starving,...

In regard to the political organization of a society, your question has been extensively and fruitfully debated for centuries, for instance in Plato's Republic, in the Federalist Papers, and in Rawls's work. The discussion shows that social rules, practices, and institutions exert great influence on character and conduct. Ethical conduct is more likely when ethical standards are clearly formulated and discussed, when there is transparency and accountability in decision making, when counter-moral incentives are restrained or suppressed, and when ethical considerations are routinely integrated into decision making processes. In regard to the organization of a business, similar desiderata apply. So, yes, structural design is important, and you do well to pay as much attention to it as you do. Still, this does not show that prevailing attitudes about morality are wrong to put individual agents at the heart of the matter. You are such an agent, and, without your thoughtfulness, your business will not be well...

It is not quite right to say that we are all participating in the spoiling of our planet. While the 16 percent of world population residing in the high-income countries live on around $30,000 annually on average, the bottom half of humankind live on less (often very much less) than $1,300 annually at purchasing power parity (corresponding to roughly $300 at market exchange rates). The bottom half are consuming and burdening the environment, but not excessively so. Nearly all the harms the question highlights are produced by their wealthier compatriots in the poorer countries and (especially) by the populations of the high-income countries. This point heightens our responsibility. We are plundering our planet and also appropriating the spoils of this plunder so lopsidedly that half of the human population still lives in dire poverty, which exposes 850 million people to hunger and malnutrition (UNDP) and causes millions of deaths (including annually 10.6 million children under age 5) from poverty...

Affirmative action programs can be morally acceptable or even required when they benefit a group that is prevented from competing on fair terms. Consider a group that had much inferior access to schooling and therefore did not have a fair chance of attaining the educational achievements that would make them competitive in their candidacy for a college or job. By giving members of this group a break, we are in one sense lowering standards: Lower-scoring candidates are chosen over higher-scoring ones. But in terms of expected performance, we may not be lowering standards at all: A somewhat lower score achieved by a poorly educated person may indicate greater brightness and promise than a somewhat higher score achieved by someone who had the opportunity of attending top schools. Of course, taking educational background into account in this way may engender resentment. But insofar as such resentment derives from a perception of injustice, it may disappear once the rationale for such affirmative action is...