¹University of Colorado

^*For helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay, thanks to Jackie Colby, Terry Nardin, George Klosko, Richard Dagger, Jamie Mayerfeld, Burke Hendrix, Brent Pickett, Jim Nickel, and Peter Digeser.

Abstract

The fairness theory of political obligation holds that individuals who receive public goods produced by the cooperative efforts of their fellow citizens have a prima facie obligation to do their fair share in return by obeying the law. However, what happens when public benefits cross borders? In an interdependent world, have political obligations begun to extend across borders? According to some critics, fairness theory leads to the conclusion that citizens who receive benefits across borders acquire political obligations to obey foreign states. In response, this article argues that fairness theorists and their critics have confused transnational moral obligations based on fairness with political obligations, which still largely coincide with the territorial boundaries of states. There are two key steps in this argument: reformulating the fairness theory of political obligation so that it focuses on the distinctive benefits provided by the rule of law; distinguishing between fairness as a basis of political obligation and fairness as a requirement of justice.