David Elkins (SMU) has posted Responding to Rawls: Toward a Consistent and Supportable Theory of Distributive Justice, 21 BYU J. Pub. L. 267 (2007), on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Rawls’ claim that undeserved traits cannot ground entitlement claim would appear to discount nationality as a factor in determining entitlements and would lead to cosmopolitanism. Attempts to avoid this result and justify domestic Rawlsianism invariably fail to do so. Thus, by limiting the application of his principles to the domestic front and rejecting their relevance internationally, Rawls was advocating an internally inconsistent position. Cosmopolitanism and libertarianism, on the other hand, while internally consistent, conflict with most people’s considered opinions.

The article explores the possibility of grounding an internally consistent social philosophy which would capture the middle ground between cosmopolitanism and libertarianism. It argues that distributive justice should be concerned with the satisfaction of needs, not the mitigation of inequality, and explores the contours and limits of a needs-based approach to justice.

The article then considers whether, in regulating its internal affairs, a state may institute an internal redistribution which goes beyond the requirements of distributive justice. It posits that while distributive justice is limited to the satisfaction of needs, transactional justice, as embodied in benefit theory, may justify a more extensive redistribution.