About

Brian Berkey is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. His work focuses on moral and political philosophy, including business ethics and environmental ethics. He has written extensively on issues such as the demandingness of morality, individual and corporate obligations of justice, climate change ethics, exploitation, effective altruism, animal ethics, collective obligations, and the relationship between ideal and non-ideal theory. Berkey is also interested in methodological issues in ethics and political philosophy, particularly the role of appeals to intuitions. His research has been published in numerous academic journals, and he is actively engaged in exploring contemporary ethical challenges through his scholarly work.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Law and economics
• Epistemology
• Environmental ethics
• Philosophy
• Economics
• Positive economics
• Biology
• Public relations
• Psychology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• The Exploitation of Work

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2026-03-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Most people who engage in work are hired by an employer and paid a salary or an hourly wage. It is widely believed that, in virtue of being paid objectionably low wages and/or subjected to other poor conditions in their employment, many of these workers are wrongfully exploited. Exploitation is standardly understood to involve taking advantage of a vulnerability in order to obtain benefits. Wrongful exploitation of workers, then, involves wrongfully taking advantage of their vulnerability in order to benefit from their labor. The central question that accounts of the wrong of exploitation must answer, therefore, is what makes it the case that any particular instance of advantage being taken of workers’ vulnerability in order to benefit from their labor is wrongful. In this chapter, the author describes and discusses the most prominent answers to this question that have been defended in recent philosophical literature.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Entrepreneurship and Obligations of Justice

  Social Philosophy and Policy · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In recent years, there has been increased interest in a variety of ways that private actors, especially actors in the business world, broadly understood, can contribute to addressing important social problems and persistent injustices. In this essay, I aim to articulate and begin to answer what seem to me to be some of the most important and challenging normative questions arising with regard to social entrepreneurship as a mode of economic activity aimed at addressing social problems or promoting justice. I focus on questions about the relationship between the pursuit of social entrepreneurial activity, the satisfaction of obligations to promote justice, and claims to income and wealth produced by successful social entrepreneurial ventures. I argue that there are reasons to think that social entrepreneurial activity can be a way that individuals (attempt to) satisfy at least some of their obligations of justice, but note that there are moral risks involved in attempting to satisfy these obligations in this way. And I suggest that there are at least some reasons, including recognition of the grounds on which we might sometimes prefer that people in a position to take these risks do so, to think that only those who accept broader moral views that are very demanding can consistently deny that social entrepreneurs who successfully generate substantial profits are morally entitled to retain them.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Everyone’s Business: What Companies Owe Society <i>by Amit Ron and Abraham A. Singer</i>

  Political Science Quarterly · 2025-12-13

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Terrorism and Moral Distinctiveness

  Philosophy · 2025-10-20

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Most people believe that there is something particularly morally repugnant about terrorism. A number of philosophers have attempted to defend this widely held view by offering accounts of precisely what it is about terrorism that makes it morally distinctive. In this paper I raise some doubts about the accounts that have been defended by others, focusing in particular on Samuel Scheffler’s view. In light of the doubts that I raise about existing accounts, I suggest what must be done in order to arrive at an adequate account, and offer an outline of a view that seems to me promising. On the view that I suggest, terrorist acts reveal something of distinctive moral significance about the agents who perpetrate them, even if they are not in themselves morally worse than otherwise similar acts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Who Is Wronged by Wrongful Exploitation?

  2024-03-19

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter argues that in some cases of wrongful exploitation, individuals who are not parties to the relevant transactions are as seriously and directly wronged as the exploited parties to those transactions. Section 1 presents two cases that provide intuitive support for this claim, and offers an initial explanation for it that relies on considerations that are similar to those that motivate the non-worseness claim. Section 2 describes some central components of an account of the wrong-making features of wrongful exploitation that is suggested by the argument in section 1, and suggests some reasons to find this type of account plausible. Section 3 notes what the arguments in sections 1 and 2 seem to imply with regard to the remedial duties of wrongful exploiters, contrasts this view with one that has recently been defended by Malmqvist and Szigeti, and argues that there are important reasons to prefer the former.

  PublisherDOI

• When Is It Permissible to Impose and Offset Risks? A Response to Barry and Cullity

  Ethics · 2024-06-03

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Christian Barry and Garrett Cullity argue that there is a morally important distinction between offsetting by “sequestering” and offsetting by “forestalling.” They further claim that offsetting by sequestering will often make risk-imposing actions permissible, while offsetting by forestalling typically will not. In this article, I highlight some reasons to be skeptical about their view and suggest an alternative account of the conditions in which offsetting can make a risk-imposing action permissible. In addition, I note a significant implication of my argument for the ethics of greenhouse gas offsetting.

  PublisherDOI

• Autonomous Vehicles and the Ethics of Driving

  Social Theory and Practice · 2024-01-01

  articleSenior author

  In this paper, we argue that if a set of plausible conditions obtain, then driving a standard vehicle rather than riding in an autonomous vehicle (AV) will become analogous to driving drunk rather than driving sober, and therefore impermissible. In addition, we argue that a ban on the production, sale, and purchase of new standard vehicles would also become justified. We make this case in part by highlighting that the central reasons typically offered in support of state-mandated vaccination will also support mandating AV use. Finally, we discuss some of the implications of our argument for the obligations of vehicle-producing firms.

  PublisherDOI

• Exploitation, Human Rights and Corporate Obligations

  Business and Human Rights Journal · 2024-10-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In this paper, I argue that there is an inconsistency between the content of some of the labour-related human rights articulated in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the obligations ascribed to various actors regarding those rights in the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), in particular those ascribed to corporations. Recognizing the inconsistency, I claim, can help us see some of the moral limitations of both familiar public responses to exploitative labour practices and influential philosophical accounts of the wrong of exploitation. In light of these limitations, I argue that there are reasons to accept a more expansive account of the human rights-related obligations of corporations than that found in the UNGPs, and in particular that we should accept that corporations have obligations to actively contribute to lifting people out of poverty.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• :<i>Being Good in a World of Need</i>

  Ethics · 2023-06-20

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ethical consumerism, human rights, and <i>Global Health Impact</i>

  Developing World Bioethics · 2023-07-18 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this paper, I raise some doubts about Nicole Hassoun's account of the obligations of states, pharmaceutical firms, and consumers with regard to global health, presented in Global Health Impact. I argue that it is not necessarily the case, as Hassoun claims, that if states are just, and therefore satisfy all of their obligations, then consumers will not have strong moral reasons, and perhaps obligations, to make consumption choices that are informed by principles and requirements of justice. This is because there may be justice-based limits on what states can permissibly and feasibly do both to promote access to existing drugs for all of those who need them, and to promote research and development for new drugs that could treat diseases that primarily affect the global poor. One important upshot of my argument is that there can be reasons for organizations like the Global Health Impact Organization to exist, and to do the kind of work that Hassoun argues is potentially valuable in our deeply unjust world, even in much less unjust worlds in which states and firms largely, or even entirely, comply with their obligations.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Minesh P. Mehta

  355 shared

• Walter J. Curran

  Piedmont Cancer Institute

  192 shared

• Paul D. Brown

  Mayo Clinic

  187 shared

• Robert B. Jenkins

  Mayo Clinic

  186 shared

• John H. Suh

  162 shared

• Caterina Giannini

  Mayo Clinic

  162 shared

• Deborah T. Blumenthal

  161 shared

• David M. Peereboom

  161 shared

Education

• Ph.D, Philosophy

  University of California Berkeley

  2012

Awards & honors

• Grant for Conference on Animals and Business, Coefficient Gi…
• Visiting Fellowship, Institute for the Study of Markets and…
• Berggruen Fellowship, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Har…
• Wolpow Family Endowed Faculty Scholar Award, 2018-2019
• Wharton Teaching Excellence Award, 2017-2018