Tasioulas, John2015-12-080026-1068http://hdl.handle.net/1885/30200John Rawls argued in The Law of Peoples that we should reject any principle of international distributive justice, whether in ideal theory or nonideal theory. Instead, he advocated a duty of assistance on the part of well-ordered societies toward burdened societies. I argue that Rawls is correct that we should endorse a principle with a target and cut-off point rather than a principle of international distributive justice. But the target and cut-off point he favors is too undemanding, because it can be met by assisting a burdened society to become a decent people. Instead, only a society that respects the right to an adequate standard of living, and not simply a right to subsistence, can be an acceptable target. Rawls is prevented from drawing this conclusion by a failure to disentangle issues of intervention and assistance, a failure bound up with his flawed, intervention-driven account of human rights in defining a decent people.Keywords: Distributive justice; Duty of assistance; Human rights; International justice; Intervention; Self-determination; Standard of livingGlobal Justice without an end?20052016-02-24