This chapter starts with a discussion of Thucydides’ famous description of wartime stasis in 3.82, including his account of transvaluations in 3.82.4. It then reassesses the historical context of Thucydides’ reflections on language and stasis; after that, it looks at several key passages where Thucydides shows the effect of the war on discourse, including the Melian Dialogue. Thucydides emerges as a writer who is overwhelmingly concerned with the way that war warps both evaluative language and practices of listening, but who sets out to rectify these effects through his own text. The chapter finishes with a revisionary treatment of Thomas Hobbes’ understanding of Thucydides.

The introduction of co-management is often associated with recognition and allocation of property rights. This chapter therefore provides definitions of the concepts of property, property rights and property regimes. Systems informed by economic theory to provide ‘user rights’ are reviewed in relation to collaborative governance, including Transferable Quota systems and Territorial User Rights for Fishing. Given that rights may be contested and not realised in practice, the chapter goes on to consider the pursuit and realisation of justice through co-management, differentiating between procedural, distribution and recognition justice. Insights from the application of a human rights based approach to natural resource governance and implications for co-management are then identified.

Air pollution has been identified as the single largest environmental health risk by the World Health Organisation. Existing legal instruments are inadequate to respond to the scale of the challenge. The question of how to design more efficient, as well as more just, legal systems is becoming increasingly pressing. The essay identifies three sets of ethical conundrums that decision-makers must confront when regulating air pollution – related to why govern, how to govern, and where to govern. It uses the planetary boundary framework that identifies the processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system, as a conceptual lens, to explore the ethical implications behind the motivations driving air quality governance, the framing of a complex environmental problem and the global governance of localized impacts. In doing so, the essay reflects on how the design of more ethically oriented legal systems can enhance environmental law’s response to planetary problems.

Chapter 5 shows how the proposed reframing of the TRIPS around the ideal of freedom as non-domination should guide the interpretation of further norms. It uses the ‘guiding light’ function of the TRIPS’ foundations (Articles 7 and 8) to interpret key TRIPS’ ‘flexibilities’. This chapter deals with exceptions and limitations, focusing on the three-step test of patent (Article 30 of TRIPS) and copyright (Article 13 of TRIPS), further addressing compulsory licensing issues (Article 31 of TRIPS) and the obligations of developed economies regarding technology transfer and technical assistance (Articles 66-67 TRIPS). These provisions are crucial pieces of the overall bargain that the TRIPS represents and presents key norms to address the legitimacy crisis of the IP regime.

This chapter introduces the planetary boundaries framework and explains the explicit and implicit role of value judgements within it. It explains the key scientific concepts at work in the planetary boundaries framework, and discusses their relationship to the goal of ensuring a ‘safe operating space’ for humanity. It then considers how the planetary boundaries framework has been advanced by its proponents as a way to achieve justice within the constraints of the Earth system, and more recently the idea that planetary boundaries can be guide humanity’s future on Earth. It considers the influence of the planetary boundaries framework on new ideas of economics and international law. Then, the chapter shows how uses of planetary boundaries to define a perimeter within which justice or fairness is sought encounter difficulties that require further ethical examination. It then presents an explanation of the approach to ethics taken by interdisciplinary, international scholars that contributed to this edited collection.

Hobbes redefines both distributive justice and merit in Leviathan. Distributive justice is turned from a virtue of subjects into ‘the Justice of an Arbitrator’ by equating distributive justice with equity – the natural law duty that sovereign and subordinate judges administer rights and goods impartially, without regard of person or rank. Accompanying this shift, Leviathan changes the meaning and grounds of ‘merit’. Hobbes now claims, ‘merit … is rewarded of Grace onely’: distributive civil laws create rather than track merit. Leviathan’s novel accounts of distributive justice and merit have major implications for what the natural law of gratitude demands. Citizens are now in addition bound by gratitude to give the sovereign ‘no reasonable cause to repent’ his good will in freely according them legal rights. Leviathan’s bold redefinition of merit ensured that citizens cannot possibly receive less from the sovereign than they deserve; thus removing a major source of civic grievances. Second, by making honours, property, and other civil rights the free gift of sovereigns, Hobbes established that citizens are bound by natural law duties of gratitude to humour and please their sovereign benefactor – including by performing their duties of political obligation.

Phosphorus mining has devastated Indigenous lifeways on the Pacific Islands of Nauru, Banaba, and the Republic of Kiribati. This chapter explains why the colonial impact of phosphate mining and contemporary planetary concerns over food security must attend to how Indigenous peoples were severed from their ways of knowing and relating to lands and waters through western economic and cultural imposition. It situates the planetary boundaries and efforts in global food security with respect to achieving restorative futures that do not reproduce logics of violence and dispossession. Using materials and images from a recent exhibition, the chapter challenges us to think anew about how stories of phosphate circulate beyond academic appraisals or scientific assessments, and among families and communities to whom justice is owed.

The planetary boundary ‘Novel Entities’ (NE) is one of the nine planetary boundaries within the PB approach. While we welcome the PB approach in principle, we consider the specific planetary boundary ‘Novel Entities’ to be problematic from an ethical perspective. In our opinion, it does not fit into the overall concept and runs the risk of initiating substitute discussions that distract from the actual problems. Furthermore, we believe that the implicit and explicit normative aspects of the PB approach have not yet been satisfactorily integrated into the approach. This is an avoidable weakness to which the proponents of the PB approach should devote more attention.

Limiting depletion of stratospheric ozone is painted as a global success story: one of exemplary human cooperation. I approach the ozone boundary as an object of colonization, and weave an anti-colonial approach to human responsibilities to ozone. The Planetary Boundaries describe a ‘safe operating space for humanity’. I will trouble this notion by focusing on the relational entanglements of the planetary system – human, animal, vegetable, mineral, and elemental. Secondly, the description camouflages ongoing colonial practices of privatizing the commons: it assumes a right to pollute (up to some predetermined limit), a right to ‘colonize’ the stratosphere. The underlying assumption is that some degree of environmental harm is tolerable, even when it involves appropriation of a global commons. My argument is that an anticolonial planetary boundary for ozone requires a relational ethic in which duties and responsibilities are to the relationships that inhere to ozone.

This chapter extends the implications of free will skepticism into the broader realm of social justice. While critics argue that justice requires belief in free will and basic desert, the author contends that many compelling theories of justice – such as those of John Rawls, David Hume, and Amartya Sen – do not rest on desert-based foundations. The chapter introduces and defends the capabilities approach, developed by Sen and Martha Nussbaum, as a promising framework for promoting justice without reliance on retributive or meritocratic notions. This approach emphasizes enhancing individuals’ real freedoms and opportunities – what they are actually able to do and be – while acknowledging the profound effects of luck, social structures, and unequal starting points. Free will skepticism reinforces the moral urgency of this view by highlighting the arbitrariness of birth and circumstance in shaping life outcomes. Rather than attributing success or failure to personal choice alone, this perspective demands attention to systemic barriers and privileges. By rejecting the myth of the self-made individual, the chapter makes a strong case for redistributive justice, inclusion, and structural reform. Ultimately, it argues that free will skepticism not only coheres with the pursuit of social justice but provides a compelling moral rationale for greater compassion, equity, and solidarity.

This chapter presents the research methodology and conceptual foundations of this study on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It combines analysis of primary and secondary sources – including archival research in London, Jerusalem, Washington, DC, and Oslo – with over one hundred semi-structured interviews. These interviews with senior officials and diplomats from ten countries and the United Nations form a rich oral history, offering firsthand insights into key moments, strategic decisions and ethical dilemmas. The conceptual framework draws on theories of justice, conflict resolution, negotiation, mediation and facilitation, as well as the concepts of political ripeness, compromise, superforecasting and spoiler management. It integrates normative and empirical scholarship to explore the conditions for peace, emphasising the role of intermediaries and the need for sustained, coordinated engagement. The chapter argues that principled compromise – anchored in analytical rigour and institutional resilience – is vital for lasting peace. This framework informs the study’s empirical analysis and contributes to broader debates in international relations, law and peace studies.

The commentary on Republic is actually a collection of seventeen essays on various topics in Republic. Proclus addresses Plato’s critique of Homer, the tripartitioning of the soul, the nature of the philosopher and his radical distinction from the so-called lovers of sights and sounds, the structure of the divided line, the difference between the superordinate Good and a Form of the Good that is a genus of types of goods, and the taxonomy of decline from the aristocratic man and the aristocratic state, ultimately to the tyrannical man and the tyrannical state. His longest essay is an analysis and meditation on the myth of Er in Republic x, focusing on the nature of wrongdoing and the moral responsibility of the individual. Each of these topics is set within the framework of the Platonic system, at the apex of which is the Idea of the Good or the One whose causal scope is shown to encompass everything that exists, including matter. Thus, epistemological, psychological, and moral problems found in the dialogue need to adduce not only the Good but also the fundamental principles of the system in order to achieve a satisfactory resolution.

Chapter 4 shows that while one cannot deny Swift’s use of a Tory “conspiracy thesis” in foreign policy tracts like The Conduct of the Allies, Swift relied more heavily on legitimate arguments and sources of international politics and law that have been underrated: Aristotle, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel Pufendorf. Aristotle taught a concept of foreign policy centered on constitutionalism, geography, naval power, self-defense, and public reason. Grotius and Pufendorf provided a foundation of natural and international law, as well as just war theory, that was secular yet grounded on classical learning and Christian ethics. Grotius’s underappreciated influence undermines the idea that Swift’s politics were purely Hobbesian, realist, or authoritarian. Swift had a realist and an idealist strain but “Grotian rationalism” predominated in the controversy over the Utrecht Peace. Grotius also fed Swift’s growing skepticism about the Whig concept of the balance of power.

Justice is central to Islamic ideology, rooted in divine principles and reflected in the structure of the universe. Economic and social justice, according to Islam, are inseparable from faith and must permeate every aspect of life – not just worship. The Qur’an and hadith stress individual and communal responsibility, condemning inequality, exploitation and negligence toward the disadvantaged. Justice is not only a moral value but a spiritual obligation, tied to one’s belief in God and accountability on the Day of Judgment.

Islam assigns collective responsibility to ensure that no one suffers from poverty or injustice. Wealth is viewed as a trust, not private property to be hoarded. Tools like charity (zakat), the prohibition of interest (riba) and profit-sharing (mudaraba) aim to prevent economic exploitation and promote fairness. Contemporary Muslim societies often fail to apply these principles, leading to increasing inequality, alienation and disconnection from faith-based justice.

Musa Sadr calls for scholars and governments to prioritize justice, support the oppressed, reform economic laws and reintegrate justice into educational and legal systems. True Islamic justice demands not charity, but systemic support – interest-free loans, rights for workers and equitable development. Without this, the community is at risk of moral and social disintegration.