relationships or transactions that can create such duties. Robert Goodin relied on this distinction to define general and special duties as follows In contrast to the universality of general moral law, some people have special duties that other people do not. In contract to the impartiality of the general moral law, we all have special duties to some people that we do not have to others. Special duties, in short bind particular people to particular other people. 3 As Philip pettit and Goodin note, these special duties can arise by virtue of agents identities, relationships or histories At least two significant debates within ethics generally, and international ethics in particular, point to the analytical payoff of distinguishing between general and special duties in international law. Those debates also show how any ethical theory of international law must be able to find a moral justification for special duties The Partiality debate. First are debates between partialists and impartialists. At its most fundamental level, impartiality describes a way that individuals and institutions decide and act, one based on disinterestedness consistency and fairness and not merely personal motives. Lawrence Becker has categorized these debates as 13 Robert E Goodin, What is So Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?, 98 ETHICS 663 665(1988 Philip pettit robert Goodin, The Possibility of special Duties, 16 CANAD. J. PHIL. 651 I am not here equating these terms with moral particularism and moral universalism That debate concerns whether generalizeable moral rules are even possible or whether all ethics is situation-specific. The debate in this paper is among groups of moral universalists. For a clarification of terms, see Lawrence Blum, Against Deriving Particularity, in MoRaL PARTICULARISM 205-11 (Brad Hooker Margaret Little eds 2000) 16 It is in this sense that Brian barry and Terry Nardin define justice as impartiality.See BRIAN BARRY, JUSTICE AS IMPARTIALITY(1995): TERRY NARDIN, LAW, MORALITY, AND THE RELATIONS OF STATES 258-59, 265(1983). See also Maclntyre's notion of the"liberal8 relationships or transactions that can create such duties. Robert Goodin relied on this distinction to define general and special duties as follows: In contrast to the universality of general moral law, some people have special duties that other people do not. In contract to the impartiality of the general moral law, we all have special duties to some people that we do not have to others. Special duties, in short, bind particular people to particular other people.13 As Philip Pettit and Goodin note, these special duties can arise by virtue of agents’ “identities, relationships or histories.”14 At least two significant debates within ethics generally, and international ethics in particular, point to the analytical payoff of distinguishing between general and special duties in international law. Those debates also show how any ethical theory of international law must be able to find a moral justification for special duties. 1. The Partiality Debate. First are debates between partialists and impartialists.15 At its most fundamental level, impartiality describes a way that individuals and institutions decide and act, one based on disinterestedness, consistency, and fairness and not merely personal motives.16 Lawrence Becker has categorized these debates as 13 Robert E. Goodin, What is So Special about Our Fellow Countrymen?, 98 ETHICS 663, 665 (1988). 14 Philip Pettit & Robert Goodin, The Possibility of Special Duties, 16 CANAD. J. PHIL. 651 (1986). 15 I am not here equating these terms with moral particularism and moral universalism. That debate concerns whether generalizeable moral rules are even possible or whether all ethics is situation-specific. The debate in this paper is among groups of moral universalists. For a clarification of terms, see Lawrence Blum, Against Deriving Particularity, in MORAL PARTICULARISM 205-11 (Brad Hooker & Margaret Little eds. 2000). 16 It is in this sense that Brian Barry and Terry Nardin define justice as impartiality. See BRIAN BARRY, JUSTICE AS IMPARTIALITY (1995); TERRY NARDIN, LAW, MORALITY, AND THE RELATIONS OF STATES 258-59, 265 (1983). See also MacIntyre’s notion of the “liberal