On Scepticism About Intergenerational Legitimacy

Most of us believe that future people – i.e., people who do not yet exist, but who will exist in the future – are directly relevant for questions of justice. Most of us also believe that those who rule should not only rule justly, but also legitimately. This invites the question: if future people matter for what counts as ruling justly, is the same true for ruling legitimately? Though it has recently been argued that future people matter for determining what is legitimate in the present, there appear to be reasons for scepticism about this possibility. It can be argued that our inability to rule future people makes it the case that we cannot act (il)legitimately towards them, and that therefore they are not directly morally relevant for what counts as ruling (il)legitimately in the present. This paper is devoted to responding to this sceptical challenge. I argue that even if we cannot act (il)legitimately towards future people, they might nevertheless have direct moral relevance for what is (il)legitimate in the present. Hence, the question of who we can act (il)legitimately towards settles no important questions on its own. This result has significant implications for the general question of how future people may feature in our theories about political legitimacy.