The last decade has witnessed a remarkable resurgence of work on the theory of distributive justice. Yet this revival of interest in an ancient topic – a revival engaging philosophers, political scientists, economists, lawyers, and other – has taken place within certain key simplifying assumptions. The central preoccupation has been the design of social institutions under legal conditions within a given society and principally, within a given generation. Like protectionist trade barriers, the spatial boundaries around the nation state, and the temporal boundaries around the current generations within it, have protected the fragile first stages of development. These barriers have insulated theories of justice from distracting and, in many cases, distributing complications that would arise were the boundaries to be crossed.
