Madison Powers is Francis J. McNamara Jr Professor Emeritus
Georgetown University. [email protected]
Current research interests include: human rights; structural injustice, within and across nations; conceptual and normative issues at the intersection of environmental policy, public health, and markets.
Georgetown University. [email protected]
Current research interests include: human rights; structural injustice, within and across nations; conceptual and normative issues at the intersection of environmental policy, public health, and markets.
Book Descriptions & List of Selected Articles
A Livable Planet: Human Rights in the Global Economy
(Oxford University Press, March 5, 2024 in the US, June 3, 2024 in the UK)
(Oxford University Press, March 5, 2024 in the US, June 3, 2024 in the UK)
Humanity faces an ecological predicament, consisting of a cluster of concurrent, mutually reinforcing crises. They are causally intertwined and resistant to resolution in isolation. In addition to climate disruption, the cluster includes land-system change, loss of biodiversity and biosphere integrity, alteration of biogeochemical cycles, and decreased freshwater availability. Madison Powers argues for a targeted human rights approach to the resolution of our predicament. He assigns priority to a bundle of rights strategically important for counteracting ecologically unsustainable, economically predatory market practices. These practices exhaust natural resources or degrade the environmental conditions essential for a livable planet. Their harmful ecological effects result from or are exacerbated by the structure of the global political economy, especially institutions that influence the acquisition, control, and use of land, energy, and water resources. These institutions shape the economic decisions that have transformed every region of the globe and altered the planetary conditions that support life on Earth.
A livable planet thus requires changes in humanity’s relation to the rest of nature, which in turn, requires transformation of our economic relationships and the political and economic ideals underpinning them. Specifically, the balance of power between states and markets should be reversed by implementing an enforceable institutional bulwark against market practices that subvert the ecological conditions essential for the secure realization of human rights. These practices enable the powerful to hoard economic opportunities, crowd out sustainable alternatives, extract resources from vulnerable communities, shift environmental and economic burdens, dodge political and market accountability, and hijack public institutions for private purposes.
Pre-Publication Reviews
This book “is extraordinary in its novelty of view, breadth of discussion, detailed scholarship, and ambition. I know of nothing like it, certainly not in philosophy, nothing that takes the Anthropocene itself as the focus of sustained book-length policy discussion…. Moreover, it claims that politics and policies that put human rights first are the best, perhaps the only way, to halt political and economic movement towards environmental catastrophe. The centrality and necessity of a human rights approach is novel." -- Darrel Moellendorf, Professor of International Political Theory and Professor of Philosophy at Goethe University, Frankfurt.
“The ecological package of issues that [Powers] lumps together is convincing and makes an important contribution. So many books today are written about one or other of the elements that he identifies, with only a token nod in the direction of the extent to which they are all interdependent. Taking the several ‘crises’ together provides a solid foundation for his argument that far-reaching and fundamental reforms are needed.” -- Philip G. Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, and UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights from 2014 until 2020.
“Madison Powers offers a novel and bold approach to climate governance. Many want to score small victories first and then tackle more complex, entrenched issues later. Powers offers a compelling critique of this low hanging fruit approach on both ethical and political grounds. He argues that we must first address the most serious practices that violate safe operating margins and thereby pose the greatest risk of destabilizing planetary systems. This approach is grounded on the priority that should be given to socioeconomic and human rights and structural ecological rights. Powers deftly brings the notions of sustainability, resilience, and social justice together. In doing so, he shows that the priority targets of climate governance should be those that are the most damaging and unjust.” --Bruce Jennings, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society.
A Reader's Guide:
The goal of the book is different from books that focus exclusively on climate change or the role of individuals in causing ecological harm. It examines climate disruption as part of a constellation of five interacting, mutually reinforcing ecological crises, and it traces the root of our comprehensive ecological predicament to the structure of the global economy – e.g., food systems, high-risk commodity markets, privatization schemes, extractive resource activities, and market practices that offload environmental burdens, externalize social costs, or perpetuate ecologically destructive forms of social organization.
In addition, six features of the book make it suitable for a variety of audiences.
First, each chapter is designed to be read as a stand-alone essay - although readers will get a deeper understanding of each chapter by reading the first section of chapter 1 (pp. 1-7).
Second, for the most part, the book is written in language accessible to non-specialist readers. One possible exception is the last section of chapter 4 (pp. 97-113), where I address concerns likely to arise primarily among some academic political and legal philosophers.
Third, chapter 2 provides a fresh conception of ecological sustainability. For example, it diverges from the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and it is used to examine the merits and limitations of several prominent proposals (e.g., consumer activism, degrowth or no growth policies, market-driven technological innovation) for achieving a sustainable global economy.
Fourth, the current state of land, water, and energy resource utilization, and the specific environmental challenges posed by each, are examined separately in chapters 6-8. Readers interested primarily in one or more of these topics can go directly to the relevant chapter.
Fifth, it is written for audiences beyond the environmental justice community. In particular, it is designed to engage readers chiefly interested in contemporary debates about the conceptual foundations and normative implications of human rights.
Sixth, two chapters are intended to be of general interest to students of the global political economy. Chapter 3 surveys and critiques several market fundamentalist rationales offered for neoliberal economic policies. [I include this discussion because the arguments for these policies pose a direct challenge to my human rights approach]. Chapter 5 inventories and explains how key political and legal institutional mechanisms emerging with the implementation of these policies promote global market practices that are economically predatory and ecologically destructive.
This book “is extraordinary in its novelty of view, breadth of discussion, detailed scholarship, and ambition. I know of nothing like it, certainly not in philosophy, nothing that takes the Anthropocene itself as the focus of sustained book-length policy discussion…. Moreover, it claims that politics and policies that put human rights first are the best, perhaps the only way, to halt political and economic movement towards environmental catastrophe. The centrality and necessity of a human rights approach is novel." -- Darrel Moellendorf, Professor of International Political Theory and Professor of Philosophy at Goethe University, Frankfurt.
“The ecological package of issues that [Powers] lumps together is convincing and makes an important contribution. So many books today are written about one or other of the elements that he identifies, with only a token nod in the direction of the extent to which they are all interdependent. Taking the several ‘crises’ together provides a solid foundation for his argument that far-reaching and fundamental reforms are needed.” -- Philip G. Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, and UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights from 2014 until 2020.
“Madison Powers offers a novel and bold approach to climate governance. Many want to score small victories first and then tackle more complex, entrenched issues later. Powers offers a compelling critique of this low hanging fruit approach on both ethical and political grounds. He argues that we must first address the most serious practices that violate safe operating margins and thereby pose the greatest risk of destabilizing planetary systems. This approach is grounded on the priority that should be given to socioeconomic and human rights and structural ecological rights. Powers deftly brings the notions of sustainability, resilience, and social justice together. In doing so, he shows that the priority targets of climate governance should be those that are the most damaging and unjust.” --Bruce Jennings, Vanderbilt University Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society.
A Reader's Guide:
The goal of the book is different from books that focus exclusively on climate change or the role of individuals in causing ecological harm. It examines climate disruption as part of a constellation of five interacting, mutually reinforcing ecological crises, and it traces the root of our comprehensive ecological predicament to the structure of the global economy – e.g., food systems, high-risk commodity markets, privatization schemes, extractive resource activities, and market practices that offload environmental burdens, externalize social costs, or perpetuate ecologically destructive forms of social organization.
In addition, six features of the book make it suitable for a variety of audiences.
First, each chapter is designed to be read as a stand-alone essay - although readers will get a deeper understanding of each chapter by reading the first section of chapter 1 (pp. 1-7).
Second, for the most part, the book is written in language accessible to non-specialist readers. One possible exception is the last section of chapter 4 (pp. 97-113), where I address concerns likely to arise primarily among some academic political and legal philosophers.
Third, chapter 2 provides a fresh conception of ecological sustainability. For example, it diverges from the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and it is used to examine the merits and limitations of several prominent proposals (e.g., consumer activism, degrowth or no growth policies, market-driven technological innovation) for achieving a sustainable global economy.
Fourth, the current state of land, water, and energy resource utilization, and the specific environmental challenges posed by each, are examined separately in chapters 6-8. Readers interested primarily in one or more of these topics can go directly to the relevant chapter.
Fifth, it is written for audiences beyond the environmental justice community. In particular, it is designed to engage readers chiefly interested in contemporary debates about the conceptual foundations and normative implications of human rights.
Sixth, two chapters are intended to be of general interest to students of the global political economy. Chapter 3 surveys and critiques several market fundamentalist rationales offered for neoliberal economic policies. [I include this discussion because the arguments for these policies pose a direct challenge to my human rights approach]. Chapter 5 inventories and explains how key political and legal institutional mechanisms emerging with the implementation of these policies promote global market practices that are economically predatory and ecologically destructive.
Structural Injustice: Power, Advantage, and Human Rights
co-authored with Ruth Faden, (Oxford University Press, 2019; paperback ed, October 03, 2023).
co-authored with Ruth Faden, (Oxford University Press, 2019; paperback ed, October 03, 2023).
This book develops a theory of structural injustice that is distinctive in several respects. Our theory forges important links between human rights norms and fairness norms, both of which are underpinned by our conception of well-being. This conception provides the foundation for human rights, explains the depth of unfairness of systematic patterns of disadvantage, and locates the fundamental unfairness of power relations in forms of control some groups have over the well-being of other groups. In our theory, structurally unfair patterns of power and advantage and human rights violations are routinely intertwined. In this, we differ from theories that presuppose that structural injustices generally emerge from largely benign social processes. We believe the more typical pattern involves identifiable agents of injustice whose wrongful conduct is manifested in creating or sustaining mutually reinforcing forms of injustice. Our theory is not specific to the domestic or global context. Rather, it applies to different kinds of nation-states and to interactions across national boundaries. We illustrate the theory through extended examples, including environmental sacrifice zones and the environmental realities of the global trend toward the urbanization of poverty.
Reviews:
"This is an urgently needed book. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden have constructed a powerfully reasoned, deeply learned, and richly perceptive theory that places the problem of structural injustice at the heart of political philosophy... The authors make conceptual breakthroughs that open new perspectives on old debates, and they write with authority and clarity on every issue they address. Their discussion is filled with wisdom and discernment, informed by a deep understanding of philosophical and social science literatures. I hope this book influences scholars, activists, policymakers, and the public at large; it should be widely studied and discussed, its arguments and insights put to productive use." -- Jamie Mayerfeld, Ethics and International Affairs
"a profound and fascinating essay on the structural injustices shaking our times... genuinely a philosophical essay. Yet one of its most significant merits is that it is written for various audiences, including researchers in bioethics and public health ethics, political philosophers, journalists, and activists." -- Ryoa Chung, Hastings Center Report
"The notion of 'structural injustice' is now commonplace among academics and activists, but this book is rare in giving it a rigorous philosophical elucidation, tying it to human rights violations, unfair disadvantage, and unfair power relations. It is a book richly informed by contemporary philosophical debates, yet written in a clear and accessible style with plenty of references to real-world examples. And it is attentive to the global dimension of the structural injustices that disfigure the contemporary world. It is a model of what philosophy that is engaged with real-world problems can be." -- John Tasioulas, Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy and Director for the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford.
Reviews:
"This is an urgently needed book. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden have constructed a powerfully reasoned, deeply learned, and richly perceptive theory that places the problem of structural injustice at the heart of political philosophy... The authors make conceptual breakthroughs that open new perspectives on old debates, and they write with authority and clarity on every issue they address. Their discussion is filled with wisdom and discernment, informed by a deep understanding of philosophical and social science literatures. I hope this book influences scholars, activists, policymakers, and the public at large; it should be widely studied and discussed, its arguments and insights put to productive use." -- Jamie Mayerfeld, Ethics and International Affairs
"a profound and fascinating essay on the structural injustices shaking our times... genuinely a philosophical essay. Yet one of its most significant merits is that it is written for various audiences, including researchers in bioethics and public health ethics, political philosophers, journalists, and activists." -- Ryoa Chung, Hastings Center Report
"The notion of 'structural injustice' is now commonplace among academics and activists, but this book is rare in giving it a rigorous philosophical elucidation, tying it to human rights violations, unfair disadvantage, and unfair power relations. It is a book richly informed by contemporary philosophical debates, yet written in a clear and accessible style with plenty of references to real-world examples. And it is attentive to the global dimension of the structural injustices that disfigure the contemporary world. It is a model of what philosophy that is engaged with real-world problems can be." -- John Tasioulas, Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy and Director for the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford.
Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy co-authored with Ruth Faden, (Oxford University Press, 2006; rev. ed., 2008).
This book poses a single question: Which inequalities, if any, are urgent matters of justice? Our answer is in two parts. The first part of our answer takes the form of a sufficientarian theory of justice, where the claim is that individuals have stringent claims for enough of six core (or essential) elements of well-being characteristic of a decent human life. However, that answer is incomplete. How much is enough also depends on how much others have and their ability to convert those goods into relative advantage that is systematically sustained in ways that work to the long-term disadvantage of the less well-off. The second part of our answer, then, is that inequalities that cascade and compound over time, leading to greater deprivation and entrenched disadvantage, thereby undermining the aims of sufficiency are deeply unjust. The primary focus here is health policy, but we argue that the theory applies equally well to other policy arenas, and moreover, that we must abandon the idea of separate spheres of justice, each concerned about a specific good.
Reviews:
"Social Justice is one of the most important books to come out in bioethics, and health policy ethics, in the last decade. It challenges us to think more broadly about what bioethics brings to the table when we evaluate health policies and public health practices. Its combination of rigor and clarity is uncommon."--Peter A. Ubel, M.D., Director, Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine, Ann Arbor
"In this excellent book, Madison Powers and Ruth Faden set out to define the essential dimensions of well-being that should guide a theory of justice, and then to show how such a theory can be applied to important issues in public health and health policy."--Hastings Center Report
"Most moral theorists think about what principles of justice would govern an ideal world. Such ideal theories do not necessarily guide us well in our non-ideal world. Powers and Faden make a powerful case for moving from ideal to non-ideal theory, and ably show how to do it in the field of justice in health care. This book makes an important advance in making moral theory more empirically responsive."--Elizabeth Anderson, John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Reviews:
"Social Justice is one of the most important books to come out in bioethics, and health policy ethics, in the last decade. It challenges us to think more broadly about what bioethics brings to the table when we evaluate health policies and public health practices. Its combination of rigor and clarity is uncommon."--Peter A. Ubel, M.D., Director, Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine, Ann Arbor
"In this excellent book, Madison Powers and Ruth Faden set out to define the essential dimensions of well-being that should guide a theory of justice, and then to show how such a theory can be applied to important issues in public health and health policy."--Hastings Center Report
"Most moral theorists think about what principles of justice would govern an ideal world. Such ideal theories do not necessarily guide us well in our non-ideal world. Powers and Faden make a powerful case for moving from ideal to non-ideal theory, and ably show how to do it in the field of justice in health care. This book makes an important advance in making moral theory more empirically responsive."--Elizabeth Anderson, John Rawls Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Selected recent publications
18. “Sustainability and Resilience,” Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, second edition, Oxford: Elsevier, 2024. pre-publication page proofs: [sustaiability_and_resilience_2024_page_proofs.pdf].
Abstract: This article explores philosophical issues posed by various ways current environmental discussions are structured. More specifically, the article examines the theoretical foundations and normative implications of conceptions of sustainability and resilience. It traces the trajectory of their development against the backdrop of traditional ideals of natural conservation and the preservation of biodiversity. Each section highlights the normative implications of divergent ways of thinking about environmental problems that are increasingly systemic in their origin and impact, global in scale, and pose substantial threats to human well-being and the conditions that support life on Earth.
17. "Introduction: Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System," Ethics and International Affairs 35 (Spring, 2021), pp. 31-33. [pdf]
16. "Food and the Global Political Economy," Ethics and International Affairs 35 (Spring, 2021), pp. 99-117. [pdf]
Abstract: This article examines how the key decisions within the global system of food production are shaped by the organization of the global political economy. The understanding of the global political economy follows standard definitions that focus on the dominant market practices and the institutional structures within which those practices are embedded. Examples of market practices and institutional policies that structurally impair the ability of states to secure the human rights of their citizens are identified, and specific issues of structural injustice raised in each example are explained. The conclusion provides a survey of a range of alternative solutions for transforming the global political economy and creating the conditions for a more just and ecologically sustainable food system. Ultimately, our conception of human rights and the mechanisms for their protection and enforcement must change in order to address the scale and gravity of problems affecting the future of agriculture and our ability to feed the world.
15. "Individual Responsibility in the Anthropocene,” in Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics: Living and Dying in a Nonideal World, eds. Elizabeth Victor and Laura Guidry-Grimes and (New York: Springer Publishing, 2021), 145-168. [pdf]
Abstract: Modern life is full of examples of environmentally-mediated “group harms” - what Derek Parfit describes as harms produced by “what we all do together.” Typically, the harms are unintended and arise from the uncoordinated actions of many individuals. Their actions ordinarily are not inherently wrong, no one’s action causes harm to an identifiable individual, and prevention of the expected harm is unlikely unless all, or nearly everyone, reduces or ceases to engage in activities that collectively and cumulatively result in harm. Unless the individual’s action is likely to make a difference to the outcome, it is often argued that it is not clear what, if anything, makes it wrong or a breach of personal moral responsibility. Activities that result in climate change and agricultural practices commonly employed within the global system of food production are prominent examples. There are several well-known strategies for dealing with such cases, but often they rest on idealized assumptions regarding the impact that one individual can have, provide answers suitable only in counterfactual circumstances, or rely on the kinds of principles of justice that make it difficult to identify clearly and address directly many important moral problems. The task of this chapter is to examine these strategies and propose alternative freestanding practical principles that can guide our efforts to address the world as we find it and explain the sense of wrongness individuals often experience.
14. “Ethical Challenges Posed by Climate Change: An Overview,” in Moral Theory and Climate Change: Ethical Perspectives on a Warming Planet. Dale E. Miller and Ben Eggleston, editors. (London: Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2020), pp. 35-57. [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter provides an overview of key moral issues posed by climate change. It first considers overarching issues: the appropriate target for harm prevention; the distinction between duties of mitigation and duties of adaptation; instances in which efforts to fulfill these duties will be self-defeating or at work cross-purposes; and the distribution of the economic burdens of fulfilling those duties. The remainder of the chapter reviews challenges to the capacity of traditional moral theories to come to grips with questions of moral responsibility. Some challenges are generic; they are applicable to both individual and institutional agents under any moral theory, while others are specific to agent-types or particular theories. The chapter then surveys differences in the way wrongness is conceptualized, including theories that view wrongness as necessarily linked to harming someone, wronging someone without harming, and doing wrong without wronging anyone. The chapter concludes by showing how the challenge of developing a plausible theory of climate change ethics is magnified by the fact that the adverse consequences are a function of what numerous individuals and institutions do or fail to do, having both international and intergenerational impact.
13. “Water, Justice, and Public Health,” Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. Jeffrey Kahn, Nancy Kass, and Anna Mastroianni, editors, (Oxford University Press, 2019). [pdf].
Abstract: This chapter utilizes theories of social justice and human rights to examine issues of access to clean water and sanitation services, along with competing uses that include agricultural purposes essential for human health. Prospects for a just system of resource access are complicated by several factors. While water is an essential public health resource, competing uses and social values must be balanced. Because groundwater and surface water availability depends on how each is used, integrated water management approaches are necessary, and their comprehensive authority results in decisions that touch on every aspect of social life. Moreover, physical water scarcity, once limited to arid and desert regions, now affects the majority of the world’s population, especially the global poor and megacities. Finally, as water assumes greater importance as a global commodity, existing models of property rights are open to fresh moral scrutiny, ideals of democratic control over vital resources are challenged, and effective national sovereignty is tested by the complex realities of transboundary waters.
12. “Food, Fairness, and Global Markets,” Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics. Anne Barnhill, Tyler Doggett, and Mark B. Budolfson, editors, (Oxford University Press, 2018). [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter examines issues of fairness in the organization of global agricultural markets. The discussion begins with a survey of the challenges in feeding the world and the debates between “market fundamentalists” who defend strongly pro-market, pro-globalization approaches and critics who deny that such challenges can be addressed fairly through markets alone or through particular forms of market organization. Conceptions of fairness that market fundamentalists and critics alike agree upon, as well as additional norms of fairness defended by critics, are applied to four prominent aspects of global market organization in the agricultural sector. They include: trade subsidies and protectionist restrictions, economic development strategies that often leave lesser developed nations caught in a commodity trap, supply-chain management though contract agriculture, and patterns of large-scale farmland acquisition known as the global and grab.
11. “Sustainability and Resilience,” Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, vol.4, edited by Dominick Della Sala and Michael Goldstein, 29-37. Oxford: Elsevier, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10491-9. [pdf]
Abstract: This article examines the conceptual foundations and normative implications of notions of sustainability and resilience. The first section shows how such notions differ from moral theories and cultural traditions that view the intrinsic value of nature as an important rationale for moral responsibilities for the condition of the environment. The second section examines challenges to some traditional rationales for natural conservation and preservation of species. Arguments for halting species loss are driven increasingly by the emerging scientific understanding of the functional roles of key species within ecological systems, the global scale of the threat that loss of specific species might have, and the sense of urgency of those threats based on anthropocentric concerns. The third section examines conceptions of sustainability as they have evolved from the 1987 Brundtland Report, and most recently, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It examines the ambiguity in the understanding of what should be sustained and why, the potential conflict between the goals of economic development and environmental protection, and divergent moral responses to problems of intergenerational and international justice. The fourth section explains the rationale for a partial shift from the focus on unsustainable resource depletion to more fundamental concerns about decreased resilience of Earth systems, in particular, risks to the planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space within which the planet can support life on Earth. The fifth section explores the divergence of criticisms that highlight modernity, globalization, economic development, or capitalist production, as well as debates prompted by a group of thinkers who often describe themselves as ecomodernists.
10. "Vulnerable Populations in the Context of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Planning, and Response." In Emergency Ethics: Public Health Preparedness and Response, edited by Bruce Jennings, John D. Arras, Drue H. Barrett, and Barbara A. Ellis, pp. 135-154. New York, Oxford University Press, 2016. [pdf]
Abstract: Surveys of disaster-related planning and guidance documents around the world reveal that public health authorities differ considerably in those groups they identify as especially vulnerable, as well as in the specificity of their plans to address the special needs of the vulnerable. Despite this, the special focus of justice on vulnerable populations has risen to the top of the agenda in many disaster preparedness planning circles This chapter examines four major issues. The first section focuses on the relevant notions of vulnerability and the related conceptions of societal duties toward vulnerable populations. Following that is a discussion of what those duties might involve in the way of practical decision and implementation, the relative stringency or priority of duties toward vulnerable populations, and how one might decide what to do when moral duties conflict. The third issue concerns the obligations to gather information, plan for, prevent, or mitigate harm from a disaster, and whether and to what extent these obligations differ in their priority and moral importance. Finally, we consider whether there are significant moral differences associated with different triggering events, such as natural disasters, terrorism, or pandemics.
9. “Moral Responsibility for Addressing Climate Change.” Routledge Companion to Bioethics, John Arras, Elizabeth Fenton, and Rebecca Kukla, editors, pp. 133-46. New York: Routledge, 2015. [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter surveys six sets of issues in the assignment of moral responsibility for addressing the threats posed by climate change. The first set of issues arises from the moral framework of the original UN Framework Convention, which assigns "common but differentiated responsibilities" among nation-states. The second, overarching issue is the complex nature of the collective moral problem that challenges the applicability of our most familiar ideas about the assignment of moral responsibility for preventing and compensating for harm. Third, the difficulties in applying the Polluter Pays Principle to individual causal contributors to climate change are examined. Fourth, multiple objections to proposals to hold nation-states responsible for the emissions of its citizens are evaluated. Fifth, two proposals for extending human rights theory to the context of harms produced by climate change are explored. Sixth, issues of moral responsibility are assessed from the point of view of the world's least powerful, most vulnerable people, who are likely to be hurt first and worst, but because of their structurally disadvantaged position in the global order are unable to exercise effective control over their own destinies.
8. “Health Care as a Human Right: The Problem of Indeterminate Content,” Jurisprudence 6 no. 1 (2015): 138-43.
7. Review: John Broome, Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, W.W. Norton and Co., 2012. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, June 2014, available online.
6. “Social Justice.” Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 4th edition, Bruce Jennings et al, editors, pp. 2966-2973. (2014). [pdf]
5. Ruth Faden and Madison Powers, "Biotechnology, Justice and Health," Journal of Practical Ethics (2013). 1 (1): 49-61. [pdf]
4. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, "Social Practices, Public Health, and the Twin Aims of Justice: Responses to Comments,” in a Symposium on Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy,” Public Health Ethics 2013 6 (1): 45-49.
3. Madison Powers, Ruth Faden, and Yashar Saghai, “Liberty, Mill, and the Framework of Public Health Ethics.” Public Health Ethics (2012). 5: 6-15. [pdf].
Abstract: In this article, we address the relevance of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy for a framework of public health ethics. In contrast to some readings of Mill, we reject the view that in the formulation of public policies liberties of all kinds enjoy an equal presumption in their favor. We argue that Mill also rejects this view and discuss the distinction that Mill makes between three kinds of liberty interests: interests that are immune from state interference; interests that enjoy a presumption in favor of liberty; and interests that enjoy no such presumption. We argue that what is of focal importance for Mill in protecting liberty is captured by the essential role that the value of self-determination plays in human well-being. Finally, we make the case for the plausibility of a more complex and nuanced Millian framework for public health ethics that would modify how the balancing of some liberty and public health interests should proceed by taking the thumb off the liberty end of the scale. Mill’s arguments and the legacy of liberalism support certain forms of state interference with marketplace liberties for the sake of public health objectives without any presumption in favor of liberty.
2. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, “Health Capabilities, Outcomes, and the Political Ends of Justice.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities (2011) 12: 565-570.
1. Ruth Faden and Madison Powers, “A Social Justice Framework for Health and Science Policy.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2011) 20: 584-604.
18. “Sustainability and Resilience,” Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, second edition, Oxford: Elsevier, 2024. pre-publication page proofs: [sustaiability_and_resilience_2024_page_proofs.pdf].
Abstract: This article explores philosophical issues posed by various ways current environmental discussions are structured. More specifically, the article examines the theoretical foundations and normative implications of conceptions of sustainability and resilience. It traces the trajectory of their development against the backdrop of traditional ideals of natural conservation and the preservation of biodiversity. Each section highlights the normative implications of divergent ways of thinking about environmental problems that are increasingly systemic in their origin and impact, global in scale, and pose substantial threats to human well-being and the conditions that support life on Earth.
17. "Introduction: Ethics and the Future of the Global Food System," Ethics and International Affairs 35 (Spring, 2021), pp. 31-33. [pdf]
16. "Food and the Global Political Economy," Ethics and International Affairs 35 (Spring, 2021), pp. 99-117. [pdf]
Abstract: This article examines how the key decisions within the global system of food production are shaped by the organization of the global political economy. The understanding of the global political economy follows standard definitions that focus on the dominant market practices and the institutional structures within which those practices are embedded. Examples of market practices and institutional policies that structurally impair the ability of states to secure the human rights of their citizens are identified, and specific issues of structural injustice raised in each example are explained. The conclusion provides a survey of a range of alternative solutions for transforming the global political economy and creating the conditions for a more just and ecologically sustainable food system. Ultimately, our conception of human rights and the mechanisms for their protection and enforcement must change in order to address the scale and gravity of problems affecting the future of agriculture and our ability to feed the world.
15. "Individual Responsibility in the Anthropocene,” in Applying Nonideal Theory to Bioethics: Living and Dying in a Nonideal World, eds. Elizabeth Victor and Laura Guidry-Grimes and (New York: Springer Publishing, 2021), 145-168. [pdf]
Abstract: Modern life is full of examples of environmentally-mediated “group harms” - what Derek Parfit describes as harms produced by “what we all do together.” Typically, the harms are unintended and arise from the uncoordinated actions of many individuals. Their actions ordinarily are not inherently wrong, no one’s action causes harm to an identifiable individual, and prevention of the expected harm is unlikely unless all, or nearly everyone, reduces or ceases to engage in activities that collectively and cumulatively result in harm. Unless the individual’s action is likely to make a difference to the outcome, it is often argued that it is not clear what, if anything, makes it wrong or a breach of personal moral responsibility. Activities that result in climate change and agricultural practices commonly employed within the global system of food production are prominent examples. There are several well-known strategies for dealing with such cases, but often they rest on idealized assumptions regarding the impact that one individual can have, provide answers suitable only in counterfactual circumstances, or rely on the kinds of principles of justice that make it difficult to identify clearly and address directly many important moral problems. The task of this chapter is to examine these strategies and propose alternative freestanding practical principles that can guide our efforts to address the world as we find it and explain the sense of wrongness individuals often experience.
14. “Ethical Challenges Posed by Climate Change: An Overview,” in Moral Theory and Climate Change: Ethical Perspectives on a Warming Planet. Dale E. Miller and Ben Eggleston, editors. (London: Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2020), pp. 35-57. [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter provides an overview of key moral issues posed by climate change. It first considers overarching issues: the appropriate target for harm prevention; the distinction between duties of mitigation and duties of adaptation; instances in which efforts to fulfill these duties will be self-defeating or at work cross-purposes; and the distribution of the economic burdens of fulfilling those duties. The remainder of the chapter reviews challenges to the capacity of traditional moral theories to come to grips with questions of moral responsibility. Some challenges are generic; they are applicable to both individual and institutional agents under any moral theory, while others are specific to agent-types or particular theories. The chapter then surveys differences in the way wrongness is conceptualized, including theories that view wrongness as necessarily linked to harming someone, wronging someone without harming, and doing wrong without wronging anyone. The chapter concludes by showing how the challenge of developing a plausible theory of climate change ethics is magnified by the fact that the adverse consequences are a function of what numerous individuals and institutions do or fail to do, having both international and intergenerational impact.
13. “Water, Justice, and Public Health,” Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics. Jeffrey Kahn, Nancy Kass, and Anna Mastroianni, editors, (Oxford University Press, 2019). [pdf].
Abstract: This chapter utilizes theories of social justice and human rights to examine issues of access to clean water and sanitation services, along with competing uses that include agricultural purposes essential for human health. Prospects for a just system of resource access are complicated by several factors. While water is an essential public health resource, competing uses and social values must be balanced. Because groundwater and surface water availability depends on how each is used, integrated water management approaches are necessary, and their comprehensive authority results in decisions that touch on every aspect of social life. Moreover, physical water scarcity, once limited to arid and desert regions, now affects the majority of the world’s population, especially the global poor and megacities. Finally, as water assumes greater importance as a global commodity, existing models of property rights are open to fresh moral scrutiny, ideals of democratic control over vital resources are challenged, and effective national sovereignty is tested by the complex realities of transboundary waters.
12. “Food, Fairness, and Global Markets,” Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics. Anne Barnhill, Tyler Doggett, and Mark B. Budolfson, editors, (Oxford University Press, 2018). [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter examines issues of fairness in the organization of global agricultural markets. The discussion begins with a survey of the challenges in feeding the world and the debates between “market fundamentalists” who defend strongly pro-market, pro-globalization approaches and critics who deny that such challenges can be addressed fairly through markets alone or through particular forms of market organization. Conceptions of fairness that market fundamentalists and critics alike agree upon, as well as additional norms of fairness defended by critics, are applied to four prominent aspects of global market organization in the agricultural sector. They include: trade subsidies and protectionist restrictions, economic development strategies that often leave lesser developed nations caught in a commodity trap, supply-chain management though contract agriculture, and patterns of large-scale farmland acquisition known as the global and grab.
11. “Sustainability and Resilience,” Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, vol.4, edited by Dominick Della Sala and Michael Goldstein, 29-37. Oxford: Elsevier, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.10491-9. [pdf]
Abstract: This article examines the conceptual foundations and normative implications of notions of sustainability and resilience. The first section shows how such notions differ from moral theories and cultural traditions that view the intrinsic value of nature as an important rationale for moral responsibilities for the condition of the environment. The second section examines challenges to some traditional rationales for natural conservation and preservation of species. Arguments for halting species loss are driven increasingly by the emerging scientific understanding of the functional roles of key species within ecological systems, the global scale of the threat that loss of specific species might have, and the sense of urgency of those threats based on anthropocentric concerns. The third section examines conceptions of sustainability as they have evolved from the 1987 Brundtland Report, and most recently, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It examines the ambiguity in the understanding of what should be sustained and why, the potential conflict between the goals of economic development and environmental protection, and divergent moral responses to problems of intergenerational and international justice. The fourth section explains the rationale for a partial shift from the focus on unsustainable resource depletion to more fundamental concerns about decreased resilience of Earth systems, in particular, risks to the planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space within which the planet can support life on Earth. The fifth section explores the divergence of criticisms that highlight modernity, globalization, economic development, or capitalist production, as well as debates prompted by a group of thinkers who often describe themselves as ecomodernists.
10. "Vulnerable Populations in the Context of Public Health Emergency Preparedness, Planning, and Response." In Emergency Ethics: Public Health Preparedness and Response, edited by Bruce Jennings, John D. Arras, Drue H. Barrett, and Barbara A. Ellis, pp. 135-154. New York, Oxford University Press, 2016. [pdf]
Abstract: Surveys of disaster-related planning and guidance documents around the world reveal that public health authorities differ considerably in those groups they identify as especially vulnerable, as well as in the specificity of their plans to address the special needs of the vulnerable. Despite this, the special focus of justice on vulnerable populations has risen to the top of the agenda in many disaster preparedness planning circles This chapter examines four major issues. The first section focuses on the relevant notions of vulnerability and the related conceptions of societal duties toward vulnerable populations. Following that is a discussion of what those duties might involve in the way of practical decision and implementation, the relative stringency or priority of duties toward vulnerable populations, and how one might decide what to do when moral duties conflict. The third issue concerns the obligations to gather information, plan for, prevent, or mitigate harm from a disaster, and whether and to what extent these obligations differ in their priority and moral importance. Finally, we consider whether there are significant moral differences associated with different triggering events, such as natural disasters, terrorism, or pandemics.
9. “Moral Responsibility for Addressing Climate Change.” Routledge Companion to Bioethics, John Arras, Elizabeth Fenton, and Rebecca Kukla, editors, pp. 133-46. New York: Routledge, 2015. [pdf]
Abstract: This chapter surveys six sets of issues in the assignment of moral responsibility for addressing the threats posed by climate change. The first set of issues arises from the moral framework of the original UN Framework Convention, which assigns "common but differentiated responsibilities" among nation-states. The second, overarching issue is the complex nature of the collective moral problem that challenges the applicability of our most familiar ideas about the assignment of moral responsibility for preventing and compensating for harm. Third, the difficulties in applying the Polluter Pays Principle to individual causal contributors to climate change are examined. Fourth, multiple objections to proposals to hold nation-states responsible for the emissions of its citizens are evaluated. Fifth, two proposals for extending human rights theory to the context of harms produced by climate change are explored. Sixth, issues of moral responsibility are assessed from the point of view of the world's least powerful, most vulnerable people, who are likely to be hurt first and worst, but because of their structurally disadvantaged position in the global order are unable to exercise effective control over their own destinies.
8. “Health Care as a Human Right: The Problem of Indeterminate Content,” Jurisprudence 6 no. 1 (2015): 138-43.
7. Review: John Broome, Climate Matters: Ethics in a Warming World, W.W. Norton and Co., 2012. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, June 2014, available online.
6. “Social Justice.” Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 4th edition, Bruce Jennings et al, editors, pp. 2966-2973. (2014). [pdf]
5. Ruth Faden and Madison Powers, "Biotechnology, Justice and Health," Journal of Practical Ethics (2013). 1 (1): 49-61. [pdf]
4. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, "Social Practices, Public Health, and the Twin Aims of Justice: Responses to Comments,” in a Symposium on Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy,” Public Health Ethics 2013 6 (1): 45-49.
3. Madison Powers, Ruth Faden, and Yashar Saghai, “Liberty, Mill, and the Framework of Public Health Ethics.” Public Health Ethics (2012). 5: 6-15. [pdf].
Abstract: In this article, we address the relevance of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy for a framework of public health ethics. In contrast to some readings of Mill, we reject the view that in the formulation of public policies liberties of all kinds enjoy an equal presumption in their favor. We argue that Mill also rejects this view and discuss the distinction that Mill makes between three kinds of liberty interests: interests that are immune from state interference; interests that enjoy a presumption in favor of liberty; and interests that enjoy no such presumption. We argue that what is of focal importance for Mill in protecting liberty is captured by the essential role that the value of self-determination plays in human well-being. Finally, we make the case for the plausibility of a more complex and nuanced Millian framework for public health ethics that would modify how the balancing of some liberty and public health interests should proceed by taking the thumb off the liberty end of the scale. Mill’s arguments and the legacy of liberalism support certain forms of state interference with marketplace liberties for the sake of public health objectives without any presumption in favor of liberty.
2. Madison Powers and Ruth Faden, “Health Capabilities, Outcomes, and the Political Ends of Justice.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities (2011) 12: 565-570.
1. Ruth Faden and Madison Powers, “A Social Justice Framework for Health and Science Policy.” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2011) 20: 584-604.