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This paper presents a framework within which to understand the legitimacy of the global order called ‘cosmopolitan sovereign equality’. It is Kant inspired and consists of three formal and three political duties. The formal duties are those of structural coherence, innate right and publicity, and the political duties those of legitimate enforcement within states, non-intervention between states, and free communication between entities within different states. These duties are constructed from a reading of Kant’s Doctrine of Right and are defended in current International political theory debates on human rights, the role of the state and international law. The framework enables conceptualization of legitimate international relations between a world state and a system of autarkic states, and places a premium on states as legitimators of force, while working from the premises of moral cosmopolitanism.