Groups as intergenerational agents: Responsibility through time and change

Abstract

Laws and political conventions impose intergenerational obligations on states and corporations. Germany finished paying reparations for World War I to Allied nations in 2010 and has been making payments to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust for over six decades. The corporation James Hardie continues to pay compensation to former workers and their families for its failure to protect them from dangers of exposure when it mined asbestos in Australia back in the 1950s. New Zealand is responsible for settling claims made by Maori communities in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi signed by the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840.Four assumptions play a critical role in practices that assign these obligations. The first is that states and corporations count as agents with moral as well as legal responsibilities. By paying reparations for World War I, Germany was fulfilling a requirement of international law. James Hardie was compelled to pay victims of asbestos exposure as the result of court decisions. But these legal requirements correspond to, and underwrite, the moral assumption that agents ought to keep their commitments and pay reparations to victims for the unjustified harm that they did. We may have doubts about some decisions imposed by law. Perhaps international conventions concerning war reparations are morally questionable. But the assumption that states and corporations are agents with moral obligations is basic to beliefs about what we can demand of them.The second assumption is that the moral obligations of these groups persist through changes of membership and the retirement and death of leaders and officials who bore responsibility for the existence of the obligations. Germany is paying reparation to Holocaust victims because of what the Nazis did. James Hardie is responsible for compensating victims of asbestos exposure because past company decisionmakers wrongfully failed to protect them. New Zealand continues to be responsible for fulfilling the terms of a treaty made by British officials in the 19th century.