Book Review: The Humanity of Universal Crime: Inclusion, Inequality, and Intervention in International Political Thought, by Sinja Graf

• Author: Sanjay Seth
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221085605
• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Date: 01 April 2023
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

442 Political Theory 51(2)

racial justice. Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

has released increasingly dire predictions of the future as climate change has

moved from expectation to reality. For some, returning to Rawls may feel

like a warm blanket in such circumstances. After all, a good blanket is valu-

able, even if one’s identity isn’t wrapped up in it, and affirming the impor-

tance of justice remains worthwhile. But Forrester suggests we can do more

with egalitarian liberalism today. If we take seriously the enormity of con-

temporary injustice, achieving freedom and equality together will require not

only tremendous ambition and radical imagination but also real humility to

reckon with how pervasive injustice has so far shaped egalitarian liberalism

itself. Demanding equality in a society pervasively structured by white

supremacy means something different than simply asking whether resources

should be redistributed from policing to other public services. Similarly, we

can and should consider the fair distribution of costs of adapting to a chang-

ing climate, but we also urgently need to begin a fundamental transformation

of the unsustainable basic structure of global society. And while egalitarian

liberals in elite schools arguably benefited from the inequality of the 1970s

and 80s, the neoliberal hollowing out of universities may have reached the

point that the continued viability of reading, writing, and teaching political

theory and philosophy as a profession depends on making higher education

genuinely available and accessible to all.

Such work can certainly be done in the spirit of Rawls, but it will require

conceptual tools that go beyond his, and it will require political allies who are

not themselves egalitarian liberals. Accordingly, against increasingly open

defense of inequality and authoritarianism, we need new shared imaginaries

that can help believers in human freedom and equality identify not with any

one master thinker but with a broader coalition of those committed to justice

for all.

The Humanity of Universal Crime: Inclusion, Inequality, and Intervention in International

Political Thought, by Sinja Graf, New York: Oxford University Press, 261 pp.

Reviewed by: Sanjay Seth, Department of Politics and International Relations,

Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.

DOI: 10.1177/00905917221085605

The expression “crimes against humanity” was used by Lloyd George to

characterize the Kaiser’s actions in initiating the Great War and figured again

during the Nuremberg trials. In both cases, what was adverted to was