Rawls limits the claims of social justice to those who participate in a shared “basic structure” of a society; he defines the basic structure as “the way in which the main political and social institutions of society fit together into one system of social [coordination], and the way they assign basic rights and duties and regulate the division of advantages that arises from social [coordination] over time” (2001, 10).1 When Rawls turns to the subject of global or international justice, he famously (or infamously) argues that there are no obligations of social justice at the global or international level, which entails that there is no basic structure at the global level. That claim has been disputed; this paper clarifies the issues in this debate, and lends qualified support to Rawls’s position.