I think the distinction between the four claims is very helpful, so thanks for that. I do think that my Poverty Relief example can generate a duty to obey, and not merely a duty to do my fair share in supporting. First, I should say that I was imaging the Poverty Relief (PR) organization to have sprung up in an otherwise anarchic situation, like David’s Prejuria example. Second, I don’t think it’s merely PR’s expertise in poverty relief that grounds my duty to obey them - it’s this fact combined with two others: (i) the assumed duty I am under to poor people to alleviate their poverty, and (ii) the assumption that PR can most effectively alleviate poverty (without violating other normative rules) if everyone in my area obeys their directives. These three facts, I claim, can generate at least a prima facie duty for me to obey PR’s directives.

Suppose I am under duty X to person P. Other things being equal, I must do my best to fulfil X. I cannot knowingly choose means which are unlikely to be successful when there are other, better options available at roughly similar cost to me. Suppose you and I come upon the scene of an accident - you are a doctor and I am have no medical knowledge. Suppose also that the victims of the accident have a right that I do my best to aid them, meaning I am under a duty to do so. The victims best chance for survival is if I (and other passers-by) do exactly what you say. Under these circumstances I cannot choose any method I like of trying to help the accident victims. I cannot decide to ignore your directives and try my hand at being a doctor myself. The duty I have to the accident victims means I must do my best to help them, and in this context doing my best requires that I obey your commands (within reason). Anything else would be failing to do what others have a right that I do.

The circumstances in my poverty relief example are meant to be relevantly similar. Only if we do what PR commands can we effectively fulfil the duty we owe to the poor. To try and do otherwise would be to failing to do what the poor have a right that we do.

F: The duty to do one’s fair share in upholding a local adequate criminal justice system.
FP: The duty to promise to do one’s fair share in upholding a local adequate criminal justice system.

O: The duty to obey the decisions of a local adequate criminal justice system.
OP: The duty to promise to obey the decisions of a local adequate criminal justice system.

The goal is to arrive at O. The global/local humanitarian story gets us to F. The trick is how to get from F to O. David wants to route us through OP, but my objection in 4. is that the value of promising only seems to support a duty to promise to X when there is a prior duty to X. So the discussion of the value of promising in this context would only move us from F to FP.

Thus, we still have a gap between (F & FP) and (O & OP) that has not been bridged yet. So why is it any easier to go from F to FP to OP to O, than to go directly from F to O?

I tend to agree that moving from F to O is not a small step. I think I would be inclined to agree that I have a duty to at least help maintain the jury system in Juristic Prejuria, since it’s better than having no system at all, but I think I would want to know more about the system to agree that I had a duty to obey it, since this seems to me to exclude just setting up an equally good competing jury system. (Perhaps that is because I tend to think of authority in terms of the right to obedience, where such right would exclude competing authority, at least with respect to the same question.)

Nevertheless, I do think we can bridge the gap between F and O with an account of why obedience is a necessary part of upholding a system*, and why this particular decision-making body is entitled to make the kinds of decisions it does. Neither of these steps, I don’t think, has to go through the will, or morally laundered will, of the person.

*Jonathan, I don’t think you’re going to get this step in your Poverty Relief case. Surely the duty would be just to support them and not necessarily obey them about how to support them? They may have an expertise in how to relieve poverty, but I don’t think that gives them an authority over us. I don’t see why obedience would be an essential part of the way in which we fulfil our duties.

Thanks for the great post. I share some of your reservations about the way David uses the device of normative consent to distinguish his position from the position of natural duty theorists like Wellman.

Suppose I have a duty to rescue people from dire poverty when I can do so at reasonable cost to myself. If the global/local solution to the particularity problem is right (and I find this solution very plausible), and if there is some local group, Poverty Relief (PR) whom I have good reason to believe are the most efficiently organized to alleviate poverty in my area, then it seems to me I have a duty to obey PR’s commands, at least when they don’t ask for more than what is reasonable. This duty to obey PR is derived from my more general natural duty to alleviate dire poverty. Why introduce the device of normative consent into this story, and say that I have a distinct duty to promise to obey PR? I couldn’t quite work out what this extra move delivers that the natural duty approach on its own doesn’t deliver.

David suggests (p. 151) that the global/local solution only explains why we have a duty to contribute to some global problem, but that it doesn’t explain why we can have a duty to obey any particular authority. But I’m not sure why the global/local model can’t also justify particular relations of authority. If the global/local model is sound, then ‘the particularity of each person’s duties…[stem] from the fact that that the best solution is a districted one’ (p. 150). One plausible way to interpret this idea is to say that our general duty to alleviate dire poverty, for example, can be more precisely specified as a duty to alleviate dire poverty in the best or most efficient manner possible. It’s plausible to suppose that an agency like the state (or like the juries in Prejuria) will be unable to fulfil their urgent functions unless the majority of people within a given territory obey its commands. We can further assume that a state which has the obedience of most people within a territory can much more efficiently fulfil the duty to aid than if everyone tried to act independently. If our duty to aid requires that we adopt the means that will best or most efficiently fulfil the duty, then we have a duty to obey the state rather than act on our own (Wellman and Dan McDermott both make arguments along these lines). This explains the duty to obey the law without recourse to the device of normative consent. It can simply be derived from our more general natural duties to aid and rescue others in the most efficient manner possible (consistent with other normative constraints). The appeal to normative consent and the slightly puzzling idea that there can be a duty to promise to obey that is distinct from the duty to obey seem unnecessary, or at least, I’m not clear on what they add to the basic natural duty account.