•  1415
    Citizens are politically autonomous insofar as they are subject to laws that are (a) justified by reasons acceptable to them and (b) authorized by them via their political institutions. An obstacle to the equal realization of political autonomy is the plurality of religious, moral, and philosophical views endorsed by citizens. Decisions regarding certain fundamental political issues (e.g., abortion) can involve citizens imposing political positions justified in terms of their respective worldvie…Read more
  •  744
    ‘The kids are alright’: political liberalism, leisure time, and childhood
    Philosophical Studies 175 (5): 1057-1070. 2018.
    Interest in the nature and importance of ‘childhood goods’ recently has emerged within philosophy. Childhood goods, roughly, are things that are good for persons qua children independent of any contribution to the good of persons qua adults. According to Colin Macleod, John Rawls’s political conception of justice as fairness rests upon an adult-centered ‘agency assumption’ and thus is incapable of incorporating childhood goods into its content. Macleod concludes that because of this, justice as …Read more
  •  643
    Shared intentions, public reason, and political autonomy
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (6): 776-804. 2019.
    John Rawls claims that public reasoning is the reasoning of ‘equal citizens who as a corporate body impose rules on one another backed by sanctions of state power’. Drawing on an amended version of Michael Bratman’s theory of shared intentions, I flesh out this claim by developing the ‘civic people’ account of public reason. Citizens realize ‘full’ political autonomy as members of a civic people. Full political autonomy, though, cannot be realised by citizens in societies governed by a ‘constrai…Read more
  •  543
    According to Philip Pettit, we should understand republican liberty, freedom as ‘non-domination,’ as a ‘supreme political value.’ It is its commitment to freedom as non-domination, Pettit claims, that distinguishes republicanism from various forms of liberal egalitarianism, including the political liberalism of John Rawls. I explain that Rawlsian political liberalism is committed to a form of non-domination, namely, a ‘political’ conception, which is: (a) limited in its scope to the ‘basic struc…Read more
  •  424
    Why Public Reasoning Involves Ideal Theorizing
    In Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber (eds.), Political Utopias: Contemporary Debates, Oup Usa. pp. 73-93. 2017.
    Some theorists—including Elizabeth Anderson, Gerald Gaus, and Amartya Sen—endorse versions of 'public reason' as the appropriate way to justify political decisions while rejecting 'ideal theory'. This chapter proposes that these ideas are not easily separated. The idea of public reason expresses a form of mutual 'civic' respect for citizens. Public reason justifications for political proposals are addressed to citizens who would find acceptable those justifications, and consequently would comply…Read more
  •  175
  •  135
    Coercion, the basic structure, and the family
    Journal of Social Philosophy 40 (1): 37-54. 2009.
    In this article I revise and defend a core feature of political liberalism, namely, the idea that principles of political justice should be limited in their scope of application to what John Rawls calls the ‘basic structure of society.’ I refer to this feature as the ‘basic structure restriction’ of political liberalism. According to my account of the basic structure restriction, the basic structure includes all and only those institutions that have a profound effect on the lives of all citize…Read more
  •  115
    Political Liberalism, Ethos Justice, and Gender Equality
    Law and Philosophy 33 (1): 75-104. 2014.
    Susan Okin criticizes John Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ because it does not apply principles of justice directly to gender relations within households. We explain how one can be a ‘political liberal feminist’ by distinguishing between two kinds of justice: the first we call ‘legitimacy justice’, conceptions of which apply to the ‘legally coercive structure’ of society; the second we call ‘ethos justice’, conceptions of which apply to citizens’ ‘non-coercive’ relations. We agree with Okin that …Read more
  •  90
    Civic respect, political liberalism, and non-liberal societies
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 4 (3): 275-299. 2005.
    One prominent criticism of John Rawls’s The Law of Peoples is that it treats certain non-liberal societies, what Rawls calls ‘decent hierarchical societies’, as equal participants in a just international system. Rawls claims that these non-liberal societies should be respected as equals by liberal democratic societies, even though they do not grant their citizens the basic rights of democratic citizenship. This is presented by Rawls as a consequence of liberalism’s commitment to the principle of…Read more
  •  85
    Amartya Sen * edited by Christopher W. Morris (review)
    Analysis 71 (2): 402-404. 2011.
    (No abstract is available for this citation)
  •  83
    Political Liberalism and Citizenship Education
    Philosophy Compass 8 (9): 781-797. 2013.
    John Rawls claims that the kind of citizenship education required by political liberalism demands ‘far less’ than that required by comprehensive liberalism. Many educational and political theorists who have explored the implications of political liberalism for education policy have disputed Rawls's claim. Writing from a comprehensive liberal perspective, Amy Gutmann contends that the justificatory differences between political and comprehensive liberalism generally have no practical significance…Read more
  •  82
    Political Liberalism, Civic Education, and Educational Choice
    Social Theory and Practice 33 (1): 47-74. 2007.
    In this paper we argue that John Rawls’s account of political liberalism requires a conception of mutual respect that differs from the one advanced in A Theory of Justice. We formulate such a political liberal form of mutual respect, which we call ‘civic respect.’ We also maintain that core features of political liberalism – in particular, the ideas of ‘the burdens of judgment’ and ‘public reason’ – do not commit political liberalism to an ideal of personal autonomy, contrary to claims made by v…Read more
  •  71
    Freedom, money and justice as fairness
    Politics, Philosophy and Economics 16 (1): 70-92. 2017.
    The first principle of Rawls’s conception of justice secures a set of ‘basic liberties’ equally for all citizens within the constitutional structure of society. The ‘worth’ of citizens’ liberties, however, may vary depending upon their wealth. Against Rawls, Cohen contends that an absence of money often can directly constrain citizens’ freedom and not simply its worth. This is because money often can remove legally enforced constraints on what citizens can do. Cohen’s argument – if modified to a…Read more
  •  63
    Civic respect, civic education, and the family
    with Gordon Davis
    Educational Philosophy and Theory 42 (1): 94-111. 2010.
    We formulate a distinctly 'political liberal' conception of mutual respect, which we call 'civic respect', appropriate for governing the public political relations of citizens in pluralist democratic societies. A political liberal account of education should aim at ensuring that students, as future citizens, learn to interact with other citizens on the basis of civic respect. While children should be required to attend educational institutions that will inculcate in them the skills and concepts …Read more
  •  30
    Liberal Foreign Policy and the Ideal of Fair Social Cooperation
    Journal of Social Philosophy 44 (3): 291-308. 2013.
    In The Law of Peoples Rawls claims that liberal well-ordered societies (LWOSs) should regard certain non-liberal societies, decent hierarchical societies (DHSs), as equal members of a just international order, a ‘Society of Peoples.’ Rawls maintains, however, that while the ‘basic structures’ (the main political and economic institutions) of LWOSs are fair systems of social cooperation, the basic structures of DHSs are only ‘decent’ systems of social cooperation. I explain why the basic structur…Read more
  •  20
    This book advances a novel justification for the idea of "public reason": citizens within diverse societies can realize the ideal of shared political autonomy, despite their adherence to different religious and philosophical views, by deciding fundamental political questions with "public reasons." Public reasons draw upon or are derived from ecumenical political ideas, such as toleration and equal citizenship, and mutually acceptable forms of reasoning, like those of the sciences. This book expl…Read more
  •  18
    Reciprocity and Liberal Legitimacy
    Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 4 (2): 1-8. 2010.
    No abstract.
  •  13
    Review of James R. Otteson, Actual Ethics (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (8). 2007.
  •  5
    Review of 'Equality and Opportunity' (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2015. 2015.
  •  5
    Review of 'Why Political Liberalism?' (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011. 2011.
  •  2
    Civic Respect, Civic Education, and the Family
    with Gordon Davis
    In Mitja Sardoc (ed.), Toleration, Respect and Recognition in Education, Wiley-blackwell. 2010.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Political Liberalism—The Main Elements Civic Respect and Civic Education Comprehensive Doctrines and Families Coercion and the Basic Structure Conclusion Notes References.
  • Review of 'Reasoning: A Social Picture' (review)
    Theory and Research in Education 13 243-246. 2015.
  • Civic Respect and Political Plural Subjects
    Dissertation, University of Michigan. 2002.
    My aim is to show that a revised version of political liberalism constitutes a compelling approach to theorizing about contemporary political issues. ;In chapter one I explain that John Rawls's move to political liberalism is not motivated by a practical concern with ensuring social stability, as many critics claim, but rather is thoroughly normative in nature: it has to do with ensuring the political legitimacy of the conception of justice that is to govern the basic structure of contemporary p…Read more
  • Review of 'Applying Rawls in the Twenty-First Century' (review)
    Review of Politics 97 324-326. 2017.