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653The structural diversity of historical injusticesJournal of Social Philosophy 37 (3). 2006.Driven by a sharp increase in claims for reparations, reparative justice has become a topic of academic debate. To some extent this debate has been marred by a failure to realize the complexity of reparative justice. In this essay we try to amend this shortcoming. We do this by developing a taxonomy of different kinds of wrongs that can underwrite claims to reparations. We identify four kinds of wrongs: entitlement violations, unjust exclusions from an otherwise acceptable system of entitlements…Read more
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174Rawls'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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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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109Reciprocity and Reasonable Disagreement: From Liberal to Democratic LegitimacyPhilosophical Studies 132 (2): 243-291. 2007.At the center of Rawls’s work post-1980 is the question of how legitimate coercive state action is possible in a liberal democracy under conditions of reasonable disagreement. And at the heart of Rawls’s answer to this question is his liberal principle of legitimacy. In this paper I argue that once we attend carefully to the depth and range of reasonable disagreement, Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy turns out to be either wildly utopian or simply toothless, depending on how one reads the…Read more
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103Rawls 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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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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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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44Pluralism, liberal democracy, and compulsory education: Accommodation and assimilationJournal of Social Philosophy 32 (4). 2001.
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41A right to health care? Participatory politics, progressive policy, and the price of loose languageTheoretical Medicine and Bioethics 37 (4): 323-342. 2016.This article begins by clarifying and noting various limitations on the universal reach of the human right to health care under positive international law. It then argues that irrespective of the human right to health care established by positive international law, any system of positive international law capable of generating legal duties with prima facie moral force necessarily presupposes a universal moral human right to health care. But the language used in contemporary human rights document…Read more
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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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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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37Justice and the Global Economy in Rawls’s the Law of PeoplesSouthwest Philosophy Review 20 (1): 241-255. 2004.
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37Human Rights: Institutions and AgendasPublic Affairs Quarterly 22 (4): 409-433. 2008.Distinguishes and shows how one can coherently affirm distinct human rights agendas rooted in distinct conceptions of human rights, each with its own normative aim and institutional and discursive field of application.
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37William Talbott’s Which Rights Should be Universal? (review)Human Rights Review 9 (2): 181-191. 2008.In this review essay, I first set out and then subject to criticism the main claims advanced by William Talbott in his excellent recent book, “Which Rights Should be Universal?”. Talbott offers a conception of basic universal human rights as the minimally necessary and sufficient conditions to political legitimacy. I argue that his conception is at once too robustly liberal and democratic and too inattentive to key features of the rule of law to play this role. I suggest that John Rawls’s concep…Read more
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32On the Human Right to Democracy: Searching for Sense without StiltsJournal of Social Philosophy 43 (2): 177-203. 2012.
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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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30Creating citizens: Political education and liberal democracyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3). 2001.Book Information Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy. By Eamonn Callan. Oxford University Press. New York. 1997. Pp. viii + 262. Hardback, £25.00.
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26Relativism, self-determination and human rightsIn Deen Chatterjee (ed.), Democracy in a Global World, Rowman&littlefield. 2008.
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19Book ReviewVincent Samar,. Justifying Judgment: Practicing Law and Philosophy.Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. Pp. 307. $40.00 (review)Ethics 112 (1): 180-182. 2001.
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18Rawls on Philosophy and Democracy: Lessons from the Archived PapersJournal of the History of Ideas 78 (2): 265-274. 2017.
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University of Tennessee, KnoxvilleDepartment of Philosophy
Political ScienceDistinguished Professor
Knoxville, Tennessee, United States of America