Lecture 8 of the Globalization of Law Lecture Series, themed “Global Justice,” offered by the Institute for International and Area Studies (IIAS) of Tsinghua University in the fall semester 2022-23, was delivered online on the afternoon of November 25, 2022. The lecture was presented by Lu Nan, associate professor of Tsinghua University Law School and member of the Teaching Committee of the IIAS, and moderated by Ding Chenxi, assistant professor at the IIAS. Scholars and students from universities in both China and beyond, including researchers and doctoral students of the IIAS, as well as other people interested in related topics attended the online lecture.
In this lecture, Professor Lu introduced Global Justice by the famous Indian economist Amartya Sen and shared his own insights and reflections on global justice. This lecture is divided into four parts: the definition of global justice, Amartya Sen’s views on justice, the differences between the transcendental and comparative approaches to justice, and Professor Lu’s reflections on Amartya Sen’s views on global justice.
Professor Lu began the lecture by discussing the definitions of justice and global justice. He pointed out that justice deals with the relationship between people and the stable institutional arrangements formed on this basis. Since ancient Greece, there have been a lot of discussions in Western academic circles around the standards of justice and the means to realizing justice, and these discussions are often centered around a political community. However, in the age of globalization, the discussions of the standards and purview of justice have expanded to include the world society. It is against this background that global justice becomes a hot topic of academic debate. There are a large number of studies on this topic.
Professor Lu introduced three representative theories of global justice by Rawls, Hobbes and Amartya Sen, and elaborated on the formation and characteristics of the three theories.
In the second part of the lecture, Professor Lu introduced the Bhagavad Gita, which led to the discussion of Amartya Sen’s theory of global justice which is founded on Indian traditional culture. Professor Lu affirmed Sen’s contribution to justice theory. However, he also pointed out Sen’s misunderstanding of Indian mythology.
In the third part of the lecture, Professor Lu compared Rawls’s transcendental approach to justice with Amartya Sen’s comparative approach to justice, and analyzed the theoretical differences between the two approaches. On this basis, he used war, poverty, and discrimination as examples to expound the differences between the transcendental and comparative approaches.
In the fourth part of the lecture, Professor Lu analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the comparative approach to justice. He pointed out that the comparative approach adds the perspective of developing countries to the debate of justice and helps to avoid ideological confrontation, identify and protect vulnerable groups in society, and translate public policies into transnational actions. Nevertheless, Sen’s comparative approach also has weaknesses. It regards institutions and capabilities as two opposite concepts. It cannot reconcile deontology and consequentialism and may even be cited as an excuse for obstructing social transformation in developing countries.
In the Q&A session following the lecture, Professor Lu had a lively discussion with the teachers and students about the definition of a free country, the relationship between the right to development and the justice theory, and the relationship between the global justice theory and civilization.
Lu Nan, associate professor of Tsinghua University School of Law and member of the Training Steering Committee of the IIAS, has a Juris Doctor degree from Tsinghua University Law School. His areas of interest include comparative law, legal culture, legal theory, and sociology of law. Dr. Lu has published many papers and articles, including “Advantages and Disadvantages of Comparative Law in the Age of Globalization,” “The WJP Rule of Law Index: Origin and Evolution,” “The Status and Role of Non-Western Cultures in Comparative Law Teaching and Research,” and “The Invisible Commercial Law: New Trends in Legal Transplantation in the Era of Globalization,” and edited a number of books including Discover Comparative Law, Handbook of Jurisprudence, and Globalization of Law: China and the World.
Text editor: Ding Ruilin
Proofreaders: Dong Hui and Ding Chenxi
Typesetting editor: Cheng Yao
