advancing justice at a global level. The exercise proposed is limited to the
members of a particular society, and the legitimacy of the principles that emerge
from it lies in the fact that they were rationally chosen by those very members.
As a result, it would be impossible to discuss global justice without the existence
of some sort of world government (Sen, 2009:2).
Thereupon, Sen presents Social Choice as a solution to the challenges
raised by the Rawlsian and transcendental approaches in general. Ranking
different social alternatives through the assessment generated by public
reasoning allows partial resolutions that recognize the inevitable variety of
conflicting principles (Sen, 2009:4). Social choice theorists have recognized a
number of “Impossibility Theorems”, which point to the overall impossibility of
simultaneously satisfying the preferences of every member of society. Yet, Sen
contends that impossibility theorems actually foster further public discussion,
which he considers to be the main contribution of Social Choice to a theory of
justice (Sen, 2009:14). Public reasoning is deemed to be the method that best
fulfils the demands of objectivity in ethical judgements, as a diversity of inputs
is the strongest guarantee of impartiality. The concept of “open impartiality” is
introduced as a way of overcoming local conventions of thought. Differently from
the Rawlsian method, which entails only a “closed impartiality”, restricting
inputs to the members of a given society, the method proposed by Sen is
inclusive of “outside” perspectives, thus eliminating the possibility of the
prevalence of parochial values. This notion derives from Adam Smith’s concept
of the “Impartial Spectator” which also highlights the necessity for a diverse and
more informed exercise of public scrutiny in order to guarantee objectivity.
Furthermore, the inclusion of universal perspectives is indispensable to a
discourse of global justice. Globalization makes it impossible for the actions of a
country to be restricted solely to its own jurisdiction, and will inevitably impact
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