-
14The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism: Kant, Rawls, and HabermasPolitical Theory 20 (4): 694-697. 1992.
-
541Democracy & Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference, Geoffery Brennan and Loren Lomasky. Cambridge University Press, 1993, 225 + x pages (review)Economics and Philosophy 12 (1): 113. 1996.
-
401Reply to Copp, Gaus, Richardson, and EdmundsonEthics 121 (2): 354-389. 2011.This piece is a response to four essays that critically discuss my book Democratic Authority. In addition to responding to their specific criticisms, it takes up several methodological issues that put some of the critiques in a broader context. Among the issues discussed are “normative consent,” which I offer as a new theory of authority; the “general acceptability requirement,” which advances a broadly Rawlsian approach to political justification; and methodological questions about theory build…Read more
-
628Jeremy Waldron on law and disagreementPhilosophical Studies 99 (1): 111-128. 2000.Waldron argues that recent treatments of justice have neglected reasonable disagreement about justice itself. So Waldron offers a procedural account of democratic legitimacy, in which contending views of justice can be brought together to arrive at a decision without deciding which one is correct. However, if there is reasonable disagreement about everything, then this includes his preferred account of legitimacy. On the other hand, it is not clear that Waldron is right to count so much disagree…Read more
-
594Democratic theoryIn Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 208--30. 2005.
-
2The Theoretical Interpretation of VotingDissertation, The University of Wisconsin - Madison. 1986.The present thesis is intended as a contribution toward a Rousseauean theory of democracy. The central problem discussed is how the act of voting must be interpreted in democratic theory. The notion of a theoretical interpretation of voting is discussed in Chapter One. A theory of democracy must include an interpretation of the act of voting if any praise or criticism of democracy is to be possible. The theoretical interpretation is distinct from an empirical account of voting behavior, and also…Read more
-
21Book Review:The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance. Steven Shiffrin (review)Ethics 102 (4): 871-. 1992.
-
26Introduction: Epistemic Approaches to DemocracyEpisteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 5 (1): 1-4. 2008.
-
247The persuasiveness of democratic majoritiesPolitics, Philosophy and Economics 3 (2): 131-142. 2004.Under the assumptions of the standard Condorcet Jury Theorem, majority verdicts are virtually certain to be correct if the competence of voters is greater than one-half, and virtually certain to be incorrect if voter competence is less than one-half. But which is the case? Here we turn the Jury Theorem on its head, to provide one way of addressing that question. The same logic implies that, if the outcome saw 60 percent of voters supporting one proposition and 40 percent the other, then average …Read more
-
5Controversy has recently erupted, at least in a recent story in the Independent, over the question of whether Brown's Philosophy Department has been inappropriately exclusionary of courses in other departments, of diverse philosophical traditions, and of non-white philosophers. These are questions well worth asking, although the article's critical stance requires some scrutiny. It is worth supplementing the article with some information that might help students think about whether they ought to …Read more
-
149The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2012.This volume includes 22 new pieces by leaders in the field on both perennial and emerging topics of keen interest to contemporary political philosophers.
-
44:Cambridge Companion to RawlsEthics 114 (3): 608-615. 2004.John Rawls is the most significant and influential philosopher and moral philosopher of the twentieth century. His work has profoundly shaped contemporary discussions of social, political and economic justice in philosophy, law, political science, economics and other social disciplines. In this exciting collection of new essays, many of the world's leading political and moral theorists discuss the full range of Rawls's contribution to the concepts of political and economic justice, democracy, li…Read more
-
116Reply to WiensEuropean Journal of Political Theory 15 (3): 353-362. 2016.In Human Nature and the Limits of Political Philosophy, I argued that justice might require things of people that they cannot bring themselves to do. A central step was to argue that this does not entail an inability to ‘do’ the putatively required thing. David Wiens challenges that argument of mine, and this piece is my reply.
-
1200Opinion leaders, independence, and Condorcet's Jury TheoremTheory and Decision 36 (2): 131-162. 1994.
-
437Liberal associationism and the rights of statesSocial Philosophy and Policy 30 (1-2): 425-449. 2013.It is often argued that if one holds a liberal political philosophy about individual rights against the state and the community, then one cannot consistently say that a state that violates those principles is owed the right of noninterference. How could the rights of the collective trump the rights of individuals in a liberal view? I believe that this debate calls for more reflection, on the relation between liberalism and individualism. I will sketch a conception of liberalism in which there is…Read more
-
29Democracy (edited book)Blackwell. 2001.Democracy brings together some of the most sophisticated thinking on democratic theory in one concise volume. Written by experts in the field, these contemporary readings are distinctively philosophical, but will appeal to students in historical, empirical, legal, or policy- oriented disciplines which deal with democratic theory.
-
12Review of Steven Shiffrin: The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance. (review)Ethics 102 (4): 871-874. 1992.
-
1197Political QualitySocial Philosophy and Policy 17 (1): 127. 2000.Political equality is in tension with political quality, and quality has recently been neglected. My thesis is that proper attention to the quality of democratic procedures and their outcomes requires that we accept substantive inequalities of political input in the interest of increasing input overall. Mainly, I hope to refute political egalitarianism, the view that justice or legitimacy requires substantive political equality, specifically equal availability of power or influence over collecti…Read more
-
277Methodological moralism in political philosophyCritical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20 (3): 385-402. 2017.
-
141I Will If You Will: Leveraged Enhancements and Distributive JusticeIn Brian Feltham & John Cottingham (eds.), Partiality and Impartiality: Morality, Special Relationships, and the Wider World, Oxford University Press. 2010.
-
429The place of self-interest and the role of power in deliberative democracyJournal of Political Philosophy 18 (1): 64-100. 2009.No Abstract
-
2988Debate: Liberalism, equality, and fraternity in Cohen's critique of RawlsJournal of Political Philosophy 6 (1). 1998.