In my paper "Arrow's Theorem, Indeterminacy, and Multiplicity Reconsidered" (published in "Ethics" in 2001) I argue that, contrary to many skeptics, majoritarian democracy is indeed conceptually coherent. I do so by submitting a majoritarian method of decision making that is not disqualified...

Left-libertarian theories of justice hold that agents are self-owners and that natural resources are owned in some egalitarian manner. Unlike egalitarianism, left-libertarianism endorses full self-ownership, and thus places strict limits on what others may do to one's person without one's...

In an increasingly interconnected world it has become hard to say what actually is so special about the state, and why there would be duties of any sort that apply among fellow citizens, but not among those who do not share a state. This study explains how dealing with this problem has become...

Concerns about fairness leave champions of free trade puzzled. First, to some, talk about fairness in trade is conceptually muddled. Ideas of fairness seem tied to the image of “leveling the playing field” and thus concerned with equalizing background conditions, whereas trade thrives on...

Majority rule is often adopted almost by default as a group decision rule. One might think, therefore, that the conditions under which it applies, and the argument on its behalf, are well-understood. However, the standard arguments in support of majority rule display systematic deficiencies....

Much current thinking about justice concerns the place of responsibility within an overall account of justice. Theorists of justice such as John Rawls have been criticized for their inability to make their conclusions accord with our intuitions about responsibility. This paper argues that such...

Are there principles of distributive justice that apply within but not across states, principles that only hold among some but not all human beings? This is perhaps the central question of contemporary political philosophy. This paper introduces a set of distinctions to make clear what the...

In this companion piece to "On the Philosophy of Group Decision Methods I: the Non-Obviousness of Majority Rule," we take a closer look at some competitors of majority rule. This exploration supplements the conclusions of the other piece, as well as offer a further-reaching introduction to some...

To what extent is a country allowed to regulate immigration into its territory, and thus to determine who lives there? Acts of immigration amount to changes in two distinct relationships. They amount to a change in political relationships, since the immigrant alters her political standing within...

My goal here is twofold: First, I wish to make a plea for the relevance of moral considerations in debates about immigration. Too often, immigration debates are conducted solely from the standpoint of "what is good for us," without regard for the justifiability of immigration policies to those...