Selected Titles on
Law and Political Theory
One Another’s Equals: The Basis of Human Equality
“This highly original and important book provides a thorough and sophisticated treatment of an issue that is of fundamental importance in moral and political philosophy, but which has not received sufficient attention or defense in recent years. The book should set the standard for further discussion of these very difficult issues for years to come.”—Samuel Freeman, Avalon Professor of the Humanities and Graduate Chair of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania
Collective Choice and Social Welfare: An Expanded Edition
A classic since 1970, this study has been recognized for its groundbreaking role in integrating economics and ethics, and for its influence in opening up new areas of research in social choice. This expanded edition preserves the text of the original while presenting eleven new chapters of fresh arguments and results and a new introduction.
Democracy: A Case Study
“This absolutely splendid book is a triumph on every level. A first-rate history of the United States, it is beautifully written, deeply researched, and filled with entertaining stories. For anyone who wants to see our democracy flourish, this is the book to read.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism
The Age of Responsibility: Luck, Choice, and the Welfare State
“Yascha Mounk traces the faltering legitimacy of the welfare state to the narrow notion of personal responsibility that politicians—and many philosophers—have come to embrace. In a compelling challenge to conservatives and liberals alike, this important book prompts us to reconsider the role of luck and choice in debates about welfare, and to rethink our mutual responsibilities as citizens.”—Michael J. Sandel, author of What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets
Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration
“Mere Civility is a terrific book—learned, vigorous, and challenging. Bejan makes Roger Williams the hero of this story and the thinker who provides a principled justification for America’s exceptional permissiveness toward ‘uncivil’ speech. Justifying the American status quo isn’t easy. Doing it with arguments that are often surprising is even harder.”—Alison McQueen, Stanford University
Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square
“Kaveny’s project in Prophecy without Contempt is important and path-breaking. The place of religious discourse in the American public square has received much attention for many years, but the role of prophetic indictment has been largely overlooked. Kaveny’s book not only opens a ‘new front’ in these debates, but starts the conversation with a rich analysis of the history and function of prophetic discourse and a carefully developed normative framework to guide its use. The interdisciplinary work that informs Kaveny’s book is especially impressive. As an ethicist and legal academic, Kaveny draws on resources from these disciplines, and she also integrates sophisticated analyses of American history, biblical scholarship, and literary criticism.”—Kathleen A. Brady, Commonweal
Politics against Domination
“Shapiro’s insights are trenchant, especially with regards to the Citizens United decision, and his counsel on how the ‘status-quo bias’ in national political institutions favors the privileged. After more than a decade of imperial overreach, his restrained account of foreign policy should likewise find support.”—Scott A. Lucas, The Los Angeles Review of Books
Political Political Theory: Essays on Institutions
“The problem with revolutionary politics, in short, is that it tends to be naïve about political institutions. I can recommend no better corrective than liberal political philosopher Jeremy Waldron, and no better introduction to his thinking than his recently published collection of essays, Political Political Theory… To read Waldron is to reawaken ideas that so shape our world that they typically only live in the background of political theory and debate. It is to survey the pantheon of constitutional liberalism—Locke, Montesquieu, Condorcet, Madison, Kant, Mill, et al.—to step into their shoes and think hard about bicameralism, bills of rights, and judicial review, and appreciate the enormity of their intellectual and real-world achievements.”—David V. Johnson, Dissent
Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly
A Times Higher Education Book of the Week, 2015
“Butler’s book is everything that a book about our planet in the 21st century should be. It does not turn its back on the circumstances of the material world or give any succour to those who wish to view the present (and the future) through the lens of fantasies about the transformative possibilities offered by conventional politics… Butler demonstrates a clear engagement with an aspect of the world that is becoming in many political contexts almost illicit to discuss: the idea that capitalism, certainly in its neoliberal form, is failing to provide a liveable life for the majority of human beings. The rhetorical question that Butler asks at the conclusion to her introduction—of how we might act together when we live in worlds in which so many forms of solidarity are diminishing—is a central question for politics throughout the world.”—Mary Evans, Times Higher Education
The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding
2015 Society of the Cincinnati History Prize, The Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey • Finalist, 2015 George Washington Book Prize, C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens
“[A] brilliant and provocative analysis of the American Revolution… [Nelson] departs radically from his predecessors, arguing that it was admiration for royal prerogative power and belief in the virtues of a strong executive, both derived from seventeenth-century precedents, that fostered the rebellion against Britain and shaped the Constitution of the new American republic. His Revolution comes out of a royalist, not a parliamentarian, tradition. The Royalist Revolution is a book of great intellectual power: it is not just challenging but erudite (many of its abundant footnotes are brilliant short essays in their own right), and, though densely argued, is written with admirable clarity and fairness.”—John Brewer, The New York Review of Books
Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title “Top 25” Selection, 2014 • A Times Higher Education Book of the Week, 2013
“[Nussbaum] maps out the routes by which men and women who begin in self-interest and ingrained prejudice can build a society in which what she calls ‘public emotions’ operate to enlarge the individual’s ‘circle of concern’… Those who would extend the sympathy individuals feel to include fellow citizens of whatever views, ethnicity, ability or disability must ‘create stable structures of concern that extend compassion broadly.’ Those structures cannot be exclusively rational and philosophical—as they tend to be in the work of John Rawls and other Kantian liberals—but must, says Nussbaum, be political in the sense that they find expression in the visible machinery of public life… It is one of the virtues of Nussbaum’s book that she neither shrinks from sentimentality (how could she, given her title and subtitle?) nor fears being judged philosophically unsophisticated.”—Stanley Fish, The New York Times
Justice for Hedgehogs
Honorable Mention, 2011 Association of American Publishers PROSE Award, Law & Legal Studies Category
“In a sustained, profound, and richly textured argument that will, from now on, be essential to all debate on the matter, Ronald Dworkin makes the case for…the unity of value… We are in at the birth, here, of a modern philosophical classic, one of the essential works of contemporary thought. It is bound to be a major debate-changer, because even the many who will find much to disagree with—Dworkin, after all, disagrees with them in advance, and robustly—will not be able to ignore the challenges he poses. And out of the heat to come, much light will shine.”
—A.C. Grayling, The New York Review of Books
The Idea of Justice
An Economist Best Book of 2009 • A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2009 • A New Statesman Top Ten Book of the Decade
“[A] majestic book… Reading The Idea of Justice is like attending a master class in practical reasoning. You can’t help noticing you are engaging with a great, deeply pluralistic, mind… This is a monumental work.”—Ziauddin Sardar, The Independent
Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
I Tatti Renaissance Library
Loeb Classical Library
Murty Classical Library of India