1. *For helpful comments and criticism, I would like to thank Duncan Bell, Paul Bou-Habib, Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Fabian Freyenhagen, Istvan Hont, Cecile Laborde, Andrew Moravcsik, Glyn Morgan, Serena Olsaretti, Mathias Risse, Richard Tuck, Laura Valentini, and Leif Wenar.
2. 1By ‘first’ principles of justice, in turn, I mean principles of justice that are not themselves derived from the application of other principles of justice to particular circumstances; according to this definition, there is no embargo on deriving first principles of justice frominter aliafacts about human nature, facts about practices and institutions, and/or moral values (such as impartiality, fairness, and respect) that are not principles of justice as such. For a similar use of the term, see G. A. Cohen,Rescuing Justice and Equality, (unpub. ms.).
3. 2I use the term ‘practice’ in Rawls's sense, namely as ‘any form of activity specified by a system of rules which defines offices, roles, moves, penalties, defenses, and so on, and which gives the activity its structure’; see John Rawls,Collected Papers, ed. S. R. Freeman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 20.
4. 3The claim that the content, scope, and justification of principles of justice (rather than merely their application) vary by context is not meant to be debunking. The thesis, that is, gives us no reason to take justice less seriously or more ‘skeptically’ than those who reject the thesis in favor of a more practice-independent view. It is an instance of what Scanlon calls a ‘benign’ view. See Thomas Scanlon,What We Owe to Each Other(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 328 ff.
5. 4See, e.g.: Michael Walzer,Spheres of Justice(New York: Basic Books, 1983); David Miller,Citizenship and National Identity(Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000).