Shmuel Nili
Biographic Data
| ID | 1235510 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shmuel Nili |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shmuel |
| FAMILY NAME | Nili |
| SIGNATURE | NILI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3956-6680 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 107 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Beyond the Law’s Reach? Reply to Critics
Michael Blake, Yuna Blajer de la Garza, and Alex Zakaras offer insightful critiques of several arguments central to my book Beyond the Law’s Reach? In the process, they raise large questions in political philosophy more generally, especially as it pertains to global affairs. Blake is skeptical about the distinction, driving much of the book, between consolidated liberal democracies and jurisdictions where the “shadow of violence” prevails. Blajer…
A strike for democracy? Migration, the bigot's veto, and the electoral use of force
Politicians and philosophers alike have warned that the spread of anti‐migrant bigotry in the Western world requires a tragic trade‐off regarding immigration policy: Although millions of asylum‐seekers might be owed admission to Western democracies, there are many cases where they nonetheless ought to be denied entry, because their admission is overly likely to increase the electoral appeal of extreme rightwing figures and parties, thus endangeri…
No escaping Ukraine? Just war and the morality of external conscription
Commonsense morality suggests that an unjustly invaded democracy may conscript its own citizens and bar them from emigrating when such a policy is necessary to sustain resistance to the invader. What does this assumption regarding ‘internal conscription’ entail for ‘external conscription’ – for foreign countries who might close their borders to many citizens of the invaded democracy, to push them to fight? Could it have been morally appropriate f…
Philosophizing the Indefensible: Reply to Critics
This essay responds to the central critiques of Philosophizing the Indefensible advanced by Nuti, Kapelner, and Garcia-Gibson. Nuti and Kapelner pose general challenges to the strategic method driving the book. Garcia-Gibson focuses on this method’s application to green energy policies. I explain why I believe that both the general account of strategic theorizing presented in the book and its specific green-energy arguments withstand the critics’…
Précis of Philosophizing the Indefensible
This book asks what distinctive contributions political philosophers might make when reflecting on obvious moral failures in public policy. I defend a particular kind of contribution: I argue that political philosophers can and should craft ‘strategic’ arguments for public policy reforms, showing how morally urgent reforms can be grounded, for the sake of discussion, even in problematic premises associated with their opponents. The book’s opening…
Hidden Redemption and the Duty to Play the Villain: A Political Exploration
Philosophizing the Indefensible: Strategic Political Theory
Getting away with it? Kleptocracy, atrocities, and the morality of autocratic exile
Foreign exile has often served as an important solution to high-stakes standoffs between opposition forces and beleaguered autocrats. I assess the moral status of autocratic exile, by focusing on the tension between exile's contribution to domestic peace and its threat to global deterrence against autocracy. I begin by contending that transitioning societies normally have the moral prerogative of accepting an exile arrangement for their autocrat,…
From Charlottesville to the Nobel: Political Leaders and the Morality of Political Honors
Political honors are ubiquitous in public life, whether in the form of public monuments, street names, or national holidays. Yet such honors have received scant attention from normative political theorists. Tackling this gap, I begin by criticizing a desert-based approach to political honors. I then argue that morally appropriate honors are best understood as marking and reinforcing the moral commitments of the collective in whose name they are b…
The people’s duty
The People’s Duty develops two philosophical frameworks centered on the sovereign people in a liberal democracy as a collective agent. First, a collective integrity framework, conceiving of a liber
The people’s integrity and property – a reply to my critics
This short reply to my critics begins with four issues concerning my conception of the people’s integrity. I clarify how general morality and, more specifically, liberal political morality, relate to my account of collective integrity. I then turn to address several questions that the critics raise regarding my conception of the people’s property
Global poverty, global sacrifices, and natural resource reforms
My aim in this essay is to advance discussion of how to justify the sacrifices that reforms combating global poverty might entail for the world’s better-off. I begin from the assumption that we should not try to motivate such sacrifices solely through the hope that they will produce significant poverty gains. Instead, we should also explore whether the affluent actually have compelling moral claims to the goods that they might be asked to relinqu…
Integrity, Personal and Political
Social discourse about morality often features appeals to identity-grounding commitments. Individuals who wish to justify their conduct to others frequently portray certain actions they pursue as stemming from commitments that are central to their identity and portray actions they reject as incompatible with their identity. Such familiar appeals to identity-grounding commitments are frequently put in terms of integrity. Yet many moral philosopher…
The moving global Everest: A new challenge to global ideal theory as a necessary compass
I present a new challenge to the Rawlsian insistence on ideal theory as a compass orienting concrete policy choices. My challenge, focusing on global politics, consists of three claims. First, I contend that our global ideal can become more ambitious over time. Second, I argue that Rawlsian ideal theory’s level of ambition might change because of concrete policy choices, responding to moral failures which can be identified and resolved without id…
Injustice Abroad, Authority at Home? Democracy, Systemic Effects, and Global Wrongs
Multiple normative theorists currently link political authority to democratic political procedures. I explore how proponents of this influential view can address a fundamental, but overlooked, puzzle. The puzzle begins from the firm judgment that even a government that keeps democratic procedures intact loses its general authority if it enacts abhorrent major laws. This judgment means that the moral failure of some laws can dissolve the moral aut…
Democratic Theory, the Boundary Problem, and Global Reform
One of the enduring problems in democratic theory is its inability to specify who should belong to the demos. In recent years, several scholars have been arguing that democratic theory should try to overcome this “boundary problem” through different kinds of global reform. I argue, however, that the boundary problem is an analytical distraction in thinking about global reform. I begin with general doubts as to whether the boundary problem can gro…
Global justice and global realities
Should global political theory “get real,” focusing on real-world moral failures? I argue that, insofar as we think it important to reflect on global morality in a world of separate states, the answer is yes. In the article’s first stage, I set up the argument by suggesting that our only convincing reasons to reject the idea of a world state are non-ideal—these reasons concern failures to comply with moral duties, rather than ideal visions of a p…
Rethinking Economic “Sanctions”
What do democracies do by refusing to trade with dictatorships? The conventional view assumes that: (1) a democratic refusal to trade with dictators is an exception that requires special justification; (2) following customary international law, dictators should normally be recognized as legitimate in selling their peoples' resources; (3) a refusal to trade is one policy option which democratic governments may choose; and (4) a refusal to trade su…
Liberal global justice and social science
My aim in this article is to ask how both the findings and the limitations of social science should inform the debate on global economic justice among liberal political philosophers. More specifically, I make three claims. First, I show that social science research casts doubt on key premises of important liberal global justice theories. However, second, I also suggest that empirical questions pivotal to these theories bring to the fore important…
Liberal Integrity and Foreign Entanglement
My aim in this article is to show that there is distinctive normative value to thinking about a liberal polity as an agent with integrity that can be threatened, paralleling the integrity of an individual person. I argue that the idea of liberal integrity organizes and clarifies important moral intuitions concerning the policies of liberal democracies, especially with regard to their global conduct. This idea provides a novel organizing framework…
Sanctions and Democracy
How do economic sanctions affect democratization, and should the former be used to promote the latter? Imposing economic pain on large swaths of an already vulnerable population in order to nudge democratic change poses thorny issues. Does it work, in terms of securing democratic outcomes? Even if it did, is this way of achieving change justifiable? We explore the connections between the normative and positive sides of the argument for sanctions …
Environmental Reform, Negative Duties, and Petrocrats: A Strategic Green Energy Argument
This article constructs an argument for the development of green energy that can appeal to Americans moderately \nskeptical of climate change. Accepting—arguendo and in a qualified way—key empirical and normative assumptions of American environmental skeptics, I make two main moves. First, while environmentalists often justify the development of green energy through references to future generations, I try to show that they need a present-oriented…
Who’s afraid of a world state? A global sovereign and the statist-cosmopolitan debate
Wary of quick statist dismissal of their proposals, cosmopolitans have been careful not to associate themselves with a world state. I argue that this caution is mistaken: cosmopolitans should see the vision of a world state as strategically valuable in exposing weaknesses in statist accounts, particularly of the Rawlsian variety. This strategic value follows if the only cogent arguments against a world state belong to non-ideal theory which assum…
R awlzickian Global Politics
ONE of the most interesting yet under-explored features of the liberal debate on global justice is the presence of what can be termed Rawlzickians. Rawlzickians are statists who reject libertarianism domestically for Rawlsian reasons, yet employ libertarian terms and arguments globally. My main purpose here is to show that the significance of this libertarian language has been vastly underestimated, even by those who speak it. A few examples shou…
Rigorist cosmopolitanism: A Kantian alternative to Pogge
What counts as global ‘harm’? This article explores this question through critical engagement with Thomas Pogge’s conception of negative duties not to harm. My purpose here is to show that while Pogge is right to orient global moral claims around negative duties not to harm, he is mistaken in departing from the standard understanding of these duties. Pogge ties negative duties to global institutions, but I argue that truly negative duties cannot …
Sanctions and Democracy
How do economic sanctions affect democratization, and should the former be used to promote the latter? Imposing economic pain on large swaths of an already vulnerable population in order to nudge democratic change poses thorny issues. Does it work, in terms of securing democratic outcomes? Even if it did, is this way of achieving change justifiable? We explore the connections between the normative and positive sides of the argument for sanctions …
Liberal Integrity and Foreign Entanglement
My aim in this article is to show that there is distinctive normative value to thinking about a liberal polity as an agent with integrity that can be threatened, paralleling the integrity of an individual person. I argue that the idea of liberal integrity organizes and clarifies important moral intuitions concerning the policies of liberal democracies, especially with regard to their global conduct. This idea provides a novel organizing framework…
The moving global Everest: A new challenge to global ideal theory as a necessary compass
I present a new challenge to the Rawlsian insistence on ideal theory as a compass orienting concrete policy choices. My challenge, focusing on global politics, consists of three claims. First, I contend that our global ideal can become more ambitious over time. Second, I argue that Rawlsian ideal theory’s level of ambition might change because of concrete policy choices, responding to moral failures which can be identified and resolved without id…
Environmental Reform, Negative Duties, and Petrocrats: A Strategic Green Energy Argument
This article constructs an argument for the development of green energy that can appeal to Americans moderately \nskeptical of climate change. Accepting—arguendo and in a qualified way—key empirical and normative assumptions of American environmental skeptics, I make two main moves. First, while environmentalists often justify the development of green energy through references to future generations, I try to show that they need a present-oriented…
Rigorist cosmopolitanism: A Kantian alternative to Pogge
What counts as global ‘harm’? This article explores this question through critical engagement with Thomas Pogge’s conception of negative duties not to harm. My purpose here is to show that while Pogge is right to orient global moral claims around negative duties not to harm, he is mistaken in departing from the standard understanding of these duties. Pogge ties negative duties to global institutions, but I argue that truly negative duties cannot …
R awlzickian Global Politics
ONE of the most interesting yet under-explored features of the liberal debate on global justice is the presence of what can be termed Rawlzickians. Rawlzickians are statists who reject libertarianism domestically for Rawlsian reasons, yet employ libertarian terms and arguments globally. My main purpose here is to show that the significance of this libertarian language has been vastly underestimated, even by those who speak it. A few examples shou…
Conceptualizing the curse: Two views on our responsibility for the ‘resource curse’
This essay critically engages proposals by Thomas Pogge and Leif Wenar meant to combat ‘the resource curse.’ Pogge and Wenar call for boycotts against stealing oppressors, sharing the expectation that the boycotts will significantly contribute to economic and political reform in the target countries. In contrast, I argue that liberal democracies should indeed stop trading with dictators and civil warriors, but for inward rather than outward looki…
Integrity, Personal and Political
Social discourse about morality often features appeals to identity-grounding commitments. Individuals who wish to justify their conduct to others frequently portray certain actions they pursue as stemming from commitments that are central to their identity and portray actions they reject as incompatible with their identity. Such familiar appeals to identity-grounding commitments are frequently put in terms of integrity. Yet many moral philosopher…
Democratic disengagement: Toward Rousseauian global reform
What are the moral costs of democratic trade with dictatorships, and what action these costs demand of our elected governments? This article develops as a Rousseauian answer the idea that democracies ought to boycott corrupt dictatorships and establish themselves collectively as an autarkic bloc, in order to reform not others but themselves. I articulate the basis for this democratic disengagement, first through a reconstruction of Rousseau's soc…
Injustice Abroad, Authority at Home? Democracy, Systemic Effects, and Global Wrongs
Multiple normative theorists currently link political authority to democratic political procedures. I explore how proponents of this influential view can address a fundamental, but overlooked, puzzle. The puzzle begins from the firm judgment that even a government that keeps democratic procedures intact loses its general authority if it enacts abhorrent major laws. This judgment means that the moral failure of some laws can dissolve the moral aut…
Democratic Theory, the Boundary Problem, and Global Reform
One of the enduring problems in democratic theory is its inability to specify who should belong to the demos. In recent years, several scholars have been arguing that democratic theory should try to overcome this “boundary problem” through different kinds of global reform. I argue, however, that the boundary problem is an analytical distraction in thinking about global reform. I begin with general doubts as to whether the boundary problem can gro…
Humanitarian disintervention
When discussing whether or not our elected governments should intervene to end genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity in other countries, the humanitarian intervention debate has largely been assuming that liberal democracies bear no responsibility for the injustice at hand: someone else is committing shameful acts; we are merely considering whether or not we have a positive duty to do something about it. Here I argue…
Liberal global justice and social science
My aim in this article is to ask how both the findings and the limitations of social science should inform the debate on global economic justice among liberal political philosophers. More specifically, I make three claims. First, I show that social science research casts doubt on key premises of important liberal global justice theories. However, second, I also suggest that empirical questions pivotal to these theories bring to the fore important…
A Poggean passport for fairness? Why Rawls’ Theory of Justice did not become global
Thomas Pogge has been challenging liberal thinking on global politics, often through critical engagement with John Rawls’ work. Pogge presents both normative and empirical arguments against Rawls: normatively, Rawls’ domestic Theory of Justice (TJ) and global Law of Peoples (LP) are incompatible ideal theories; empirically, LP is too removed from the actual world to guide the foreign policy of liberal societies. My main purpose here is to contest…
The Rules of the Game—Nationalism, Globalisation and Football in Spain: Barça and Bilbao in a Comparative Perspective
This paper discusses the triangular relation between nationalism, globalisation and football in Spain. The aim of the work is to compare the way two Spanish football clubs—the Catalan FC Barcelona (known as "Barça") and the Basque Athletic Bilbao—respond to the challenges posed by the game's globalisation, and through this comparison learn about the nexus between nationalism and globalisation. The main claim is that the differences between the tw…
Who’s afraid of a world state? A global sovereign and the statist-cosmopolitan debate
Wary of quick statist dismissal of their proposals, cosmopolitans have been careful not to associate themselves with a world state. I argue that this caution is mistaken: cosmopolitans should see the vision of a world state as strategically valuable in exposing weaknesses in statist accounts, particularly of the Rawlsian variety. This strategic value follows if the only cogent arguments against a world state belong to non-ideal theory which assum…
The Nuclear (and the) Holocaust: Israel, Iran, and the Shadows of Auschwitz
The main thesis of this article is that the Holocaust is indispensable for understanding Israel’s treatment of what it perceives as the greatest current threat to its security - the Iranian nuclear program. The Holocaust’s impact deviates in crucial ways from established teaching regarding balance of power in general and nuclear deterrence in particular. Mutually Assured Destruction, the distinction between capabilities and intentions, and even l…
Hidden Redemption and the Duty to Play the Villain: A Political Exploration
Getting away with it? Kleptocracy, atrocities, and the morality of autocratic exile
Foreign exile has often served as an important solution to high-stakes standoffs between opposition forces and beleaguered autocrats. I assess the moral status of autocratic exile, by focusing on the tension between exile's contribution to domestic peace and its threat to global deterrence against autocracy. I begin by contending that transitioning societies normally have the moral prerogative of accepting an exile arrangement for their autocrat,…
The people’s duty
The People’s Duty develops two philosophical frameworks centered on the sovereign people in a liberal democracy as a collective agent. First, a collective integrity framework, conceiving of a liber
Global poverty, global sacrifices, and natural resource reforms
My aim in this essay is to advance discussion of how to justify the sacrifices that reforms combating global poverty might entail for the world’s better-off. I begin from the assumption that we should not try to motivate such sacrifices solely through the hope that they will produce significant poverty gains. Instead, we should also explore whether the affluent actually have compelling moral claims to the goods that they might be asked to relinqu…
Global justice and global realities
Should global political theory “get real,” focusing on real-world moral failures? I argue that, insofar as we think it important to reflect on global morality in a world of separate states, the answer is yes. In the article’s first stage, I set up the argument by suggesting that our only convincing reasons to reject the idea of a world state are non-ideal—these reasons concern failures to comply with moral duties, rather than ideal visions of a p…
The Rules of the Game—Nationalism, Globalisation and Football in Spain: Barça and Bilbao in a Comparative Perspective
This paper discusses the triangular relation between nationalism, globalisation and football in Spain. The aim of the work is to compare the way two Spanish football clubs—the Catalan FC Barcelona (known as "Barça") and the Basque Athletic Bilbao—respond to the challenges posed by the game's globalisation, and through this comparison learn about the nexus between nationalism and globalisation. The main claim is that the differences between the tw…
A Poggean passport for fairness? Why Rawls’ Theory of Justice did not become global
Thomas Pogge has been challenging liberal thinking on global politics, often through critical engagement with John Rawls’ work. Pogge presents both normative and empirical arguments against Rawls: normatively, Rawls’ domestic Theory of Justice (TJ) and global Law of Peoples (LP) are incompatible ideal theories; empirically, LP is too removed from the actual world to guide the foreign policy of liberal societies. My main purpose here is to contest…
Our Problem of Global Justice
The Nuclear (and the) Holocaust: Israel, Iran, and the Shadows of Auschwitz
The main thesis of this article is that the Holocaust is indispensable for understanding Israel’s treatment of what it perceives as the greatest current threat to its security - the Iranian nuclear program. The Holocaust’s impact deviates in crucial ways from established teaching regarding balance of power in general and nuclear deterrence in particular. Mutually Assured Destruction, the distinction between capabilities and intentions, and even l…
Democratic disengagement: Toward Rousseauian global reform
What are the moral costs of democratic trade with dictatorships, and what action these costs demand of our elected governments? This article develops as a Rousseauian answer the idea that democracies ought to boycott corrupt dictatorships and establish themselves collectively as an autarkic bloc, in order to reform not others but themselves. I articulate the basis for this democratic disengagement, first through a reconstruction of Rousseau's soc…
Humanitarian disintervention
When discussing whether or not our elected governments should intervene to end genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity in other countries, the humanitarian intervention debate has largely been assuming that liberal democracies bear no responsibility for the injustice at hand: someone else is committing shameful acts; we are merely considering whether or not we have a positive duty to do something about it. Here I argue…
Conceptualizing the curse: Two views on our responsibility for the ‘resource curse’
This essay critically engages proposals by Thomas Pogge and Leif Wenar meant to combat ‘the resource curse.’ Pogge and Wenar call for boycotts against stealing oppressors, sharing the expectation that the boycotts will significantly contribute to economic and political reform in the target countries. In contrast, I argue that liberal democracies should indeed stop trading with dictators and civil warriors, but for inward rather than outward looki…
Rigorist cosmopolitanism: A Kantian alternative to Pogge
What counts as global ‘harm’? This article explores this question through critical engagement with Thomas Pogge’s conception of negative duties not to harm. My purpose here is to show that while Pogge is right to orient global moral claims around negative duties not to harm, he is mistaken in departing from the standard understanding of these duties. Pogge ties negative duties to global institutions, but I argue that truly negative duties cannot …
Who’s afraid of a world state? A global sovereign and the statist-cosmopolitan debate
Wary of quick statist dismissal of their proposals, cosmopolitans have been careful not to associate themselves with a world state. I argue that this caution is mistaken: cosmopolitans should see the vision of a world state as strategically valuable in exposing weaknesses in statist accounts, particularly of the Rawlsian variety. This strategic value follows if the only cogent arguments against a world state belong to non-ideal theory which assum…
R awlzickian Global Politics
ONE of the most interesting yet under-explored features of the liberal debate on global justice is the presence of what can be termed Rawlzickians. Rawlzickians are statists who reject libertarianism domestically for Rawlsian reasons, yet employ libertarian terms and arguments globally. My main purpose here is to show that the significance of this libertarian language has been vastly underestimated, even by those who speak it. A few examples shou…
Sanctions and Democracy
How do economic sanctions affect democratization, and should the former be used to promote the latter? Imposing economic pain on large swaths of an already vulnerable population in order to nudge democratic change poses thorny issues. Does it work, in terms of securing democratic outcomes? Even if it did, is this way of achieving change justifiable? We explore the connections between the normative and positive sides of the argument for sanctions …
Environmental Reform, Negative Duties, and Petrocrats: A Strategic Green Energy Argument
This article constructs an argument for the development of green energy that can appeal to Americans moderately \nskeptical of climate change. Accepting—arguendo and in a qualified way—key empirical and normative assumptions of American environmental skeptics, I make two main moves. First, while environmentalists often justify the development of green energy through references to future generations, I try to show that they need a present-oriented…
Global justice and global realities
Should global political theory “get real,” focusing on real-world moral failures? I argue that, insofar as we think it important to reflect on global morality in a world of separate states, the answer is yes. In the article’s first stage, I set up the argument by suggesting that our only convincing reasons to reject the idea of a world state are non-ideal—these reasons concern failures to comply with moral duties, rather than ideal visions of a p…
Rethinking Economic “Sanctions”
What do democracies do by refusing to trade with dictatorships? The conventional view assumes that: (1) a democratic refusal to trade with dictators is an exception that requires special justification; (2) following customary international law, dictators should normally be recognized as legitimate in selling their peoples' resources; (3) a refusal to trade is one policy option which democratic governments may choose; and (4) a refusal to trade su…
Liberal global justice and social science
My aim in this article is to ask how both the findings and the limitations of social science should inform the debate on global economic justice among liberal political philosophers. More specifically, I make three claims. First, I show that social science research casts doubt on key premises of important liberal global justice theories. However, second, I also suggest that empirical questions pivotal to these theories bring to the fore important…
Liberal Integrity and Foreign Entanglement
My aim in this article is to show that there is distinctive normative value to thinking about a liberal polity as an agent with integrity that can be threatened, paralleling the integrity of an individual person. I argue that the idea of liberal integrity organizes and clarifies important moral intuitions concerning the policies of liberal democracies, especially with regard to their global conduct. This idea provides a novel organizing framework…
Democratic Theory, the Boundary Problem, and Global Reform
One of the enduring problems in democratic theory is its inability to specify who should belong to the demos. In recent years, several scholars have been arguing that democratic theory should try to overcome this “boundary problem” through different kinds of global reform. I argue, however, that the boundary problem is an analytical distraction in thinking about global reform. I begin with general doubts as to whether the boundary problem can gro…
Global poverty, global sacrifices, and natural resource reforms
My aim in this essay is to advance discussion of how to justify the sacrifices that reforms combating global poverty might entail for the world’s better-off. I begin from the assumption that we should not try to motivate such sacrifices solely through the hope that they will produce significant poverty gains. Instead, we should also explore whether the affluent actually have compelling moral claims to the goods that they might be asked to relinqu…
Integrity, Personal and Political
Social discourse about morality often features appeals to identity-grounding commitments. Individuals who wish to justify their conduct to others frequently portray certain actions they pursue as stemming from commitments that are central to their identity and portray actions they reject as incompatible with their identity. Such familiar appeals to identity-grounding commitments are frequently put in terms of integrity. Yet many moral philosopher…
The moving global Everest: A new challenge to global ideal theory as a necessary compass
I present a new challenge to the Rawlsian insistence on ideal theory as a compass orienting concrete policy choices. My challenge, focusing on global politics, consists of three claims. First, I contend that our global ideal can become more ambitious over time. Second, I argue that Rawlsian ideal theory’s level of ambition might change because of concrete policy choices, responding to moral failures which can be identified and resolved without id…
Injustice Abroad, Authority at Home? Democracy, Systemic Effects, and Global Wrongs
Multiple normative theorists currently link political authority to democratic political procedures. I explore how proponents of this influential view can address a fundamental, but overlooked, puzzle. The puzzle begins from the firm judgment that even a government that keeps democratic procedures intact loses its general authority if it enacts abhorrent major laws. This judgment means that the moral failure of some laws can dissolve the moral aut…
From Charlottesville to the Nobel: Political Leaders and the Morality of Political Honors
Political honors are ubiquitous in public life, whether in the form of public monuments, street names, or national holidays. Yet such honors have received scant attention from normative political theorists. Tackling this gap, I begin by criticizing a desert-based approach to political honors. I then argue that morally appropriate honors are best understood as marking and reinforcing the moral commitments of the collective in whose name they are b…
The people’s duty
The People’s Duty develops two philosophical frameworks centered on the sovereign people in a liberal democracy as a collective agent. First, a collective integrity framework, conceiving of a liber
The people’s integrity and property – a reply to my critics
This short reply to my critics begins with four issues concerning my conception of the people’s integrity. I clarify how general morality and, more specifically, liberal political morality, relate to my account of collective integrity. I then turn to address several questions that the critics raise regarding my conception of the people’s property
Philosophizing the Indefensible: Strategic Political Theory
Political science (29 works) · Law (28 works) · Law (26 works) · Politics (24 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (22 works) · Law and economics (21 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Philosophy (14 works)