April 17-18, 2009
University of Washington

Poster photography and design:
Andy Meyer

Michael Blake (Philosophy and School of Public Policy)

Maureen Kelley (Bioethics and Pediatrics, School of Medicine)

Jamie Mayerfeld (Political Science and Law, Societies & Justice)

Adam Moore (Philosophy and Information School)

William Talbott (Philosophy and Law, Societies & Justice) Email

Simpson Center for the Humanities
Program on Values in Society
College of Arts & Sciences
The Graduate School
Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics
Program on Law, Societies & Justice
Law School
Political Science
Center for Global Studies
Department of Bioethics and Humanities

All conference sessions except the keynote are in the Walker-Ames Room in Kane Hall (Room 225).

NOTE: Clicking on hyperlinked paper titles will download PDF.

Friday, April 17, 2009

8:30 – 8:45 am: Welcome and Introduction.

8:45 – 10:15 am:
Nicole Hassoun "Libertarian Welfare Rights?"

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Commentator: Michael Blake, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs and Director of Program on Values in Society at the University of Washington

10:15 – 10:30 am: Break.

10:30 am - Noon:
Dan Wikler "Single vs. Multiple Standards
in Health Care and Research: An Issue
of Global Justice"
Commentator: Maureen Kelly, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Bioethics; Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Medical History and Ethics and the Department of Philosophy; and Ethics Consultant for the Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at the University of Washington

Noon – 1:30 pm: Lunch Break.

1:30 – 3:00 pm:
Allen Buchanan "Innovation and Inequality"

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Commentator: William J. Talbott, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington

3:00 – 3:15 pm: Break.

3:15 – 4:45 pm:
Angelina Godoy "Intellectual Property, Medicines, and the Right to Health: A View from Central America"

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Commentator: Matthew Sparke, Professor of Geography and International Studies at the University of Washington

7 pm in Kane Hall, Room 210:
Thomas Pogge
"The Health Impact Fund: Boosting Innovation Without Obstructing Free Access"

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8:30 – 9:30 pm: Reception in Kane 245.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

8:45 – 10:15 am:
Brad R. Roth "Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement: Premises of a Pluralist International Legal Order"

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Commentator: Jamie Mayerfeld, Associate Professor of Political Science and Law, Societies & Justice at the University of Washington

10:15 – 10:30 am: Break.

10:30 am - Noon:
Joel Ngugi "The Corrosive Effects of
Neoliberal Legal Thought on Global Human Rights Discourse"

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Commentator: Adam Moore, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Information, and the Program on Values in Society at the University of Washington.

Noon – 1:30 pm: Lunch

1:30 pm – 3 pm:
Mathias Risse "Who Should Shoulder the Burden? Global Climate Change and Common Ownership of the Earth"

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Commentator: Deen Chatterjee, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah

3:00 – 3:15 pm: Break.

3:15 – 4:45 pm:
Stephen Gardiner "Geoengineering the Climate in a Perfect Moral Storm"

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Commentator: William Rodgers, Stimson Bullitt Professor of Law at the University of Washington

Allen Buchanan is James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and James B. Duke Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University. He is the author of six books and over one hundred articles.  His most recent book is Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (2003). He is one of the most influential philosophers working in the area of justice and international law.

Stephen Gardiner is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle. His main areas of interest are ethical theory, political philosophy and environmental ethics. He also teaches topics in applied ethics, philosophy of economics and ancient Greek philosophy. His current research includes projects in the areas of global political philosophy, ethics and global environmental policy (especially global climate change), Aristotelian virtue ethics, and egalitarianism and market systems.

Angelina Godoy holds the Helen H. Jackson Endowed Chair in Human Rights at the University of Washington. She is Associate Professor in the Law, Societies & Justice program and the Jackson School of International Studies. Her scholarship is focused on human rights. She is the author of Popular Injustice: Violence, Community, and Law in Latin America (2006) and numerous articles. Her current research project examines how intellectual property rules in regional free trade agreements have affected access of the poor to life-saving medicines.

Nicole Hassoun is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University. She is affiliated with Carnegie Mellon's Program on International Relations and the Center for Bioethics and Health Law at the University of Pittsburgh. Hassoun writes primarily in political philosophy and ethics and focuses, in particular, on global economic and environmental justice. She is also interested in methodological issues in philosophy and the other social sciences.

Joel Ngugi is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Washington, where he teaches human rights, international organizations, and business law. His scholarship examines how discourses of the rule of law, economic development, and human rights are reshaping international and domestic law and policy. Ngugi has worked for the World Bank and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. In 2004-05 UW law students named him Philip A. Trautman Professor of the Year.

Thomas Pogge has a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Philosophy and in the Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. He is the author of one of the most influential philosophical works on global poverty, World Poverty and Human Rights (2002). In addition, he has written and edited several other books and authored over a hundred scholarly articles. 

Mathias Risse is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Philosophy, John F. Kennedy School of Justice, Harvard University. He works on a variety of issues related to the moral analysis of international politics. His current research focuses on the continuing relevance of territoriality for questions of international distributive justice.

Brad R. Roth is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Law School at Wayne State University.  Roth's scholarship focuses on the norms that underpin the international legal order. He is the author of Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law and numerous articles appearing in political theory and law journals. He is now completing a book entitled Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement that defends the principle of state sovereignty against recent moral and political criticisms. 

Dan Wikler is Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health at Harvard University.  He served as the first staff ethicist for the World Health Organization.  His research focuses on ethical issues in population health and global health, including resource allocation and the use of human subjects in health research.

Today there is more attention to normative issues of global justice than ever before. This conference will bring together scholars at the forefront of this research to consider questions such as: What would a just global order look like? Will it require new transnational institutions? How can global problems of human rights, health care, poverty, and environmental degradation best be addressed?

Read more about Global Justice in the 21st Century in the April 6, 2009, A&S Perpectives feature.

Thomas Pogge (Philosophy, Yale University) will deliver the keynote address. Known for his rigorous and original arguments demanding a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, Pogge has become one of the most influential theorists of global justice. His proposals for reforming the international economic order are laid out in his landmark 2002 book World Poverty and Human Rights. Pogge has also written on immigration, humanitarian intervention, and the duties of international nongovernmental organizations.

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