Presidential Lecture

What Do We Need To Do To Achieve a Just Peace? A “Conversation” with John Rawls

Philosopher John Rawls’s 1999 study The Law of Peoples leans upon the idea of a “democratic peace” to support the credibility of peace among “liberal peoples.” But the standards of justice he prescribes for the foreign policies of liberal peoples are more demanding than the standards typically associated with the democratic peace. In this lecture, Michael W. Doyle explores what the Rawlsian standards actually are, whether Rawlsian “liberal peoples” actually exist, and whether the liberal peoples he posits would be realistically meet the standards of just foreign relations Rawls proposes.