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of all, to record my appreciation to the thousands of undergraduates who have joined me in this journey over the years. Their lively engagement with questions of justice is reflected, I hope, in the spirit of this book. I am also grateful to the several hundred graduate students and law students who have helped me teach the course. Their probing questions in our weekly staff meetings not only kept me on my toes but also deepened my understanding of the philosophical themes we together were imparting to our students.

Writing a book is very different from teaching a course, however similar the subject matter. So in many ways, writing this book involved starting from scratch. For support while writing, I am grateful to the Harvard Law School’s faculty summer research workshop. I am also indebted to the Carnegie Scholars Program of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which has supported my work on the moral limits of markets. I am especially grateful to Vartan Gregorian, Patricia Rosenfield, and Heather McKay for their kindness, patience, and support. The portions of this book that touch on markets and morals represent the beginning of a project I still owe them.

I was the beneficiary of a splendid team at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Jonathan Galassi, Paul Elie, Jeff Seroy, and Laurel Cook were a pleasure to work with from start to finish, as was my literary agent, Esther Newberg. Their love of books, and of bookmaking, informs everything they do, and makes life easy for an author. I am deeply grateful for their help.

My sons, Adam and Aaron, have been subjected to arguments about justice around the dinner table from the time they could hold a spoon. Their moral seriousness, brilliance, and passion have been challenging, enriching, and a pleasure to behold. When in doubt, we all turn to Kiku, our moral and spiritual touchstone, my soul mate. I dedicate this book to her with love.

INDEX

Abe, Shinzo, 209

abortion debate, 251–52, 253

Abu Ghraib prison, 90

Adenauer, Konrad, 208

affirmative action, 167–83; arguments about purpose, 191–92; compensatory argument, 170–71; correcting for testing gap, 169–70; diversity argument, 171–73; Hopwood case, 167–68; question of higher education purpose, 182–83; reasons for taking race and ethnicity into account, 169–73; for white people, 177–78

Afghan goatherds, 24–27

After Virtue (Maclntyre), 221

agent standpoint, comparison with object standpoint, 128

air pollution standards, cost-benefit analysis, 44–46

Allen, Woody, 163–64

Amazon.com, 58

American International Group (AIG), 13, 14

AmeriCorps, 84

Anderson, Elizabeth, 97–98

anti-Jewish quotas, 176

apologies, public, for historic injustices: argument against, 211–13; and moral individualism, 213–15; obligations of solidarity, 234–35; question of collective responsibility, 210–11, 212, 215; World War II wrongs, 208–209

Aristotle, 184–207; defense of slavery, 200–202, 203; and surrogacy debate, 98; theory of justice, 9, 12, 186–88, 200, 201–202, 204, 217, 242; theory of the good, 216–17; views on distributive justice, 192–95; views on good life, 9, 187, 193–94, 195, 196, 199–200, 215, 216–17, 242; views on learning by doing, 197–99; views on politics, 192, 193–95, 196, 197, 199, 200; views on virtue, 9, 197–99 Arthur, Chester A., 77 assisted suicide, 72–73, 74 auctioning college admissions, 181–83 Australia, question of historic injustices to indigenous peoples, 209, 211 autonomy: comparison with heteronomy, 109, 110, 117, 128; as ideal behind moral force in contracts, 144, 149–51; Kant’s view, 109, 110, 117, 214; and question of prostitution, 130–31; relationship to duty, 125–26; relationship to morality, 124; and same-sex marriage debate, 257

Baby M case, 91–97, 99

bailout outrage, 12–18

Bakke case, 168, 172, 175

banks and financial firms: awarding of bonuses by, 13–14; targets of bailout outrage, 12–18; as “too big to fail,” 13

Bear Stearns, 17

beggar roundups, Bentham’s proposal, 35–37

benefit-based aspect of obligations, 144–45, 146, 147–49

Bentham, Jeremy: background, 34; comparison with Immanuel Kant,