Chris Naticchia’s paper offers a critique of the paper by Allen Buchanan discussed on Monday. As with Buchanan, we will not have time to discuss the whole of Naticchia, so I’ve assigned only part. More precisely, the assignment is as follows: the introductory paragraphs and §§I-II, pp. 242-250, and, from §III, the 1st 7 ¶¶ (through “…keeping our fingers crossed.”), pp. 250-253, and the last 3 ¶¶ (from “Earlier I said …”), p. 257.
The issue in dispute between the two is the grounds on which states should be recognized, so this is a question regarding the moral justification of an aspect of international law. Part of the question is what the principle of recognition should be, but another part is the sort of justification that should be given to such principles. The latter side of the dispute between Buchanan and Naticchia is analogous to the disputes between deontological and consequentialist approaches that you’ve seen in a number of issues in municipal law.
• Naticchia’s introduction and first section present the issue and a summary of Buchanan’s view.
• Section II presents three objections to Buchanan and, along the way, fills out Naticchia’s alternative views regarding criteria of recognition (which were sketched briefly in the introduction). The first identifies “a kind of inconsistency” (p. 246) in Buchanan’s approach. You should ask yourself not only whether Buchanan’s approach has the consequences Naticchia claims but also whether such consequences represent a serious problem. The other two objections concern the level set for “minimal” justice. Since Naticchia argues that this must be set on pragmatic grounds if Buchanan’s view is to work, this discussion provides some sense of the sort of considerations that Naticchia thinks should be used to settle questions of recognition directly. However, the discussion is still fairly abstract and you should think about how the points made might be illustrated with more concrete examples.
• Naticchia’s last section looks at possible objections to his views. I have assigned only the beginning of this discussion (pp. 250-253), where he argues that the two approaches may have the same consequences in practice and that his does not lead to complicity in injustice, and the very end (p. 257), where he develops a point he has also made earlier, that his approach has the advantage of “candor.”