Historic Injustice and the Possibility of Supersession

This paper examines the reasoning behind Jeremy Waldron's influential thesis concerning the possibility of the supersession of historical injustice. It argues that Waldron establishes only the possibility that distributions of property brought about by unjust acts may become just distributions in certain limited circumstances. It argues further that it is not clear that the circumstances of colonisation in Australia meet the relevant criteria and that the consequences of this argument for the rights of colonised Indigenous peoples are more limited than is commonly thought.