Global Justice as Impartiality: Whither Claims to Equal Shares? 1

A strong tradition within liberal contractualism holds that this normative view yields a strong case for distributive equality, both domestically and globally:

considerations of justice apply at least wherever there is systematic economic interaction; for whenever there is regularised commerce there is an institution in Rawls' sense, i.e. a public system of rules defining rights and duties etc. Thus the Difference Principle would apply to the world economic system taken as a whole as well as to particular societies within it (Scanlon, 1973, pp. 106-7).