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15Three Human Rights AgendasCanadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 19 (2). 2006.In this paper I distinguish between three conceptions of human rights and thus three human rights agendas. Each is compatible with the others, but distinguishing each from the others has important theoretical and practical advantages. The first conception concerns those human rights tied to natural duties binding all persons to one another independent of and prior to any institutional context and the violation of which would “shock the conscience” of any morally competent person. The second conc…Read more
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65This is an encyclopedia entry (for the IVR Encyclopedia of legal and political philosophy) covering John Rawls. It aims to provide a general but not superficial introduction to Rawls's theory of justice, justice as fairness.
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8Education for citizenship in a pluralist liberal democracyJournal of Value Inquiry 30 (1-2): 25-42. 1996.
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13The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2014.John Rawls is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has permanently shaped the nature and terms of moral and political philosophy, deploying a robust and specialized vocabulary that reaches beyond philosophy to political science, economics, sociology, and law. This volume is a complete and accessible guide to Rawls' vocabulary, with over 200 alphabetical encyclopaedic entries written by the world's leading Rawls scholars. From 'basic s…Read more
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Democracy in a Global World: Human Rights and Political Participation in the 21st Century (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2007.The chapters in this volume deal with timely issues regarding democracy in theory and in practice in today's globalized world. Authored by leading political philosophers of our time, they appear here for the first time. The essays challenge and defend assumptions about the role of democracy as a viable political and legal institution in response to globalization, keeping in focus the role of rights at the normative foundations of democracy in a pluralistic world
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38Rawls's religion and justice as fairnessHistory of Political Thought 31 (2): 309-344. 2010.The recent posthumous publication of John Rawls's undergraduate thesis 'A Brief Inquiry Into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community' constitutes a welcome opportunity to examine the relationships between Rawls's religious commitments and his political philosophy. In this essay, informed by a complete examination of Rawls's archived papers at Harvard, I set out some of these commitments, trace their development over time, and indicate some of the ways th…Read more
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31On the Human Right to Democracy: Searching for Sense without StiltsJournal of Social Philosophy 43 (2): 177-203. 2012.
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38This is the introduction to the Ashgate volume on Rawls in their history of political thought series. It puts Rawls's life and work in context and then discusses the essays included in the volume, essays of high quality likely to shape scholarship on Rawls for the coming decades.
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11Universal Human Rights: Moral Order in a Divided World (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2005.Universal Human Rights brings new clarity to the important and highly contested concept of universal human rights. This collection of essays explores the foundations of universal human rights in four sections devoted to their nature, application, enforcement, and limits, concluding that shared rights help to constitute a universal human community, which supports local customs and separate state sovereignty. The eleven contributors to this volume demonstrate from their very different perspectives…Read more
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102Rawls on International JusticePolitical Theory 32 (3): 291-319. 2004.Rawls's "The Law of Peoples" has not been well received. The first task of this essay is to draw (what the author regards as) Rawls's position out of his own text where it is imperfectly and incompletely expressed. Rawls's view, once fully and clearly presented, is less vulnerable to common criticisms than it is often taken to be. The second task of this essay is to go beyond Rawls's text to develop some supplementary lines of argument, still Rawlsian in spirit, to deflect key criticisms made by…Read more
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5Book Review: Justice, Luck and Knowledge (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 4 (1): 137-140. 2007.
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32Rushing to revolution? A second look at globalization and justiceEconomics and Philosophy 22 (1): 125-137. 2006.In Globalization and Justice, Kai Nielsen brings his distinctive and passionate voice and considerable philosophical abilities to one of the pressing issues of our time: Is justice possible in our increasingly globalized world? Nielsen argues that it is, though the demands of justice are great, the challenges substantial, and the odds very long. Without a clear philosophical understanding of justice and a firm and focused political will, Nielsen maintains, we are likely to have globalization wit…Read more
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44Pluralism, liberal democracy, and compulsory education: Accommodation and assimilationJournal of Social Philosophy 32 (4). 2001.
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92A Just Global Economy: In Defense of RawlsThe Journal of Ethics 11 (2): 193-236. 2007.In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls does not discuss justice and the global economy at great length or in great detail. What he does say has not been well-received. The prevailing view seems to be that what Rawls says in The Law of Peoples regarding global economic justice is both inconsistent with and a betrayal of his own liberal egalitarian commitments, an unexpected and unacceptable defense of the status quo. This view is, I think, mistaken. Rawls’s position on global or international economic…Read more
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14Human Rights: The Hard Questions (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2013.The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. A burgeoning human rights movement followed, yielding many treaties and new international institutions and shaping the constitutions and laws of many states. Yet human rights continue to be contested politically and legally and there is substantial philosophical and theoretical debate over their foundations and implications. In this volume, distinguished philosophers, political scientists, internationa…Read more
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2Human Rights and Liberal TolerationCanadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 23 (2): 287-317. 2010.Offers, by way of systematic reconstruction of Rawls's Law of Peoples, a principled view of human rights and liberal toleration.
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17Rawls on Philosophy and Democracy: Lessons from the Archived PapersJournal of the History of Ideas 78 (2): 265-274. 2017.
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109Rawls's Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia? (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2006.This volume examines Rawls's theory of international justice as worked out in his controversial last book, The Law of Peoples.
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173Rawls's wide view of public reason: Not wide enoughRes Publica 6 (1): 49-72. 2000.What sorts of reasons are i) required and ii) morally acceptable when citizens in a pluralist liberal democracy undertake to resolve pressing political issues? This paper presents and then critically examines John Rawls''s answer to this question: his so called wide-view of public reason. Rawls''s view requires that the content of liberal public reason prove rich enough to yield a reasoned and determinate resolution for most if not all fundamental political issues. I argue that the content of li…Read more
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University of Tennessee, KnoxvilleDepartment of Philosophy
Political ScienceDistinguished Professor
Knoxville, Tennessee, United States of America