In preparation for twitter's impending demise

just checking whether I still have the keys to this old place. Might need it.

Trying a new site

I'm going to experiment with moving my very occasional blogging over to http://jacobtlevy.com/blog/ .

Classical liberalism and intersectionality

[tap tap] Is this thing on? Anyone still got this on your RSS feeds?

I have the lead essay in this month's Cato Unbound, on the value of intersectional analysis to classical liberalism. Replies forthcoming from Fabio Rojas, Phil Magness, and Melissa Harris-Perry.

I may resume occasional blogging over here.

What I've been up to, 2018

The big thing this year was the "Political Theory In/ And/ As Political Science conference. It was intellectually terrific and a lot of fun, and I think it may help catalyze some real change in the discipline. Lots of pictures of it here, including a number of the special reception we held to honor Jane Mansbridge being awarded the Skytte Prize. There will be publications and spinoffs and an ongoing workshop series to come; the first spinoff was a theme panel at APSA.

Beyond that I have mostly been working on my next book, Justice in Babylon.

New academic publications:
"Political Libertarianism," in M. Todd Henderson, ed., The Cambridge Handbook of Classical Liberal Thought, Cambridge University Press.
"'Less Than We Think': Politics Without Guarantees," part of a symposium on Teresa Bejan's Mere Civility

Named lectures:
Johan de Beus Lecture, University of Amsterdam, November 19 2018: "Justice In Babylon."
Saurman Distinguished Lecture, San Jose State University, February 28, 2018: "Black Liberty Matters."

Public commentary and online writings:
"'Make America Free Again' Isn't Trump's Agenda," Cato Unbound, December 21, 2018
"Populism's Dangerous Companions," Cato Unbound, December 14, 2018
"The Democrats' Best Response to Republican Power Grabs." The New York Times, December 11, 2018
"Winning Isn't Everything," Niskanen, October 11, 2018. Reprinted in Salon.
"Law and Border," Niskanen, July 25 2018. reprinted in Salon.
"Who's Afraid of Judith Shklar? Foreign Policy, July 2018
"Does Liberalism Require the Right Kind of Religion?" Online Library of Liberty, May 7, 2018
"The Weight of the Words," Niskanen, February 7 2018


Audio and video:
August 2018: "The Evolution of the Ideas of Liberty," Cato University/ C-SPAN 3
August 2018: "Libertarian Conceptions of Order," Cato University
August 2018: "Peace and Toleration," Cato University
August 2018: "Ethics forward" podcast with Avery Kolers (Philosophy, Louisville): Multicultural manners
September 7, 2018: Shawn Apel, CBC Radio Noon, On Steve Bannon, and the anonymous op-ed from within the Trump administration.


New entries published online-first at The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory which I am editing
Emily Nacol on JGA Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment
Eric Schliesser on Jon Elster, Sour Grapes

Finally, three of my former advisees (at various stages) began new tenure-track appointments this year:

Guillaume Bogiaris, University of West Alabama
Mara Marin, University of Victoria
Briana McGinnis, College of Charleston

The Democrats’ Best Response to Republican Power Grabs

[tap tap] Is this thing still on? In case anybody's still got this blog in their RSS feed who doesn't follow me on Twitter or Facebook or BHL, I might as well add a mention here: I have my first piece in the New York Times, on restoring democratic norms as a political strategy.

What I’ve been up to, 2017

Copying this over from here.

Updates, December 2016-December 2017

Academic:

"There Is No Such Thing As Ideal Theory", 33(1-2) Social Philosophy & Policy 312-333 (2016), was published in a special issue of Social Philosophy and Policy on realism and idealism in political theory.

“Contra Politanism” has been published online-first at The European Journal of Political Theory.

“Corps Intermédiaires, Civil Society, and the Art of Association” In Naomi Lamoreaux and John Wallis, eds., Organizations, Civil Society, and the Roots of Development. University of Chicago Press/ National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017

“Against Fraternity: Democracy Without Solidarity.” In Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, eds., The Strains of Commitment: Solidarity in Diverse Societies. Oxford University Press, 2017

“Toward a Non-Lockean Libertarianism,” in Bas van der Vossen, Jason Brennan, and David Schmidtz, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism, London: Routledge, 2017.

Review of Jeremy Waldron, Political Political Theory, in The Review of Politics.

A slightly revised paperback edition of Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom was published by Oxford University Press.

In August 2017 I was the Dan and Gwen Taylor Fellow visiting in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago (New Zealand).

Entries continue to be published online-first as they are ready at The Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory. Thirty-five have been published so far.



Public commentary, primarily but not exclusively in my new capacity as of 2017 as a Senior Fellow of the Niskanen Center:

"Statist just-so stories," Reason, December 2017 (review of James C. Scott, Against the Grain) 

"The Limits of legalism," Niskanen, November 27 2017

"Black liberty matters," Niskanen, September 20, 2017

"All good things," Boston Review, September 2017

"The sovereign myth," Niskanen, June 15 2017

"Why walking out is better than shouting down," The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 25 2017

"The shortcut to serfdom," Niskanen, May 16 2017

"A government of laws, not son-in-laws," Niskanen, April 20, 2017

Federalism, jurisdiction, and resistance," Niskanen, February 22, 2017

"Hypocrisy isn't the problem. Nihilism is." Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2017. Reprinted in The Chicago Tribune. 

"The free society is an open society." Niskanen, January 31, 2017. "Les murs ne bloquent pas seulement les gens à l'extérieur, mais aussi à l'intérieur,"  Slate.fr, February 6, 2017.

"The party declines." Niskanen, January 18, 2017

"The defense of liberty can't do without identity politics." Niskanen, December 13, 2016



  Upcoming: I will spend the winter/spring semester of 2018 on sabbatical at Stanford in the Department of Political Science and the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. The 2018 Annual Lecture of the Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds will be given March 29 by Timur Kuran. The 2016 Lecture was given by Orlando Patterson and can be seen here. The 2017 Lecture was given by Saskia Sassen and can be seen here. In May 2018 I will co-chair, with Josiah Ober and Melissa Schwartzberg, a conference on “Political Theory In/ And/ As Political Science.” In January 2019 I will begin a term as Political Theory Field Editor for The Journal of Politics.

What I've been up to, 2016

Obviously I haven't been using this blog much, but for something of such narrow interest as "the year in me" (really, pretty much of interest only to me), this is a better venue than Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

It was an active year, some of which had to do with follow-up to Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom but most of which involved new projects.

(Not going to worry about categories here, since this is a blog post not a CV.)

Symposium on Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom at BHL

Symposium on Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom at the Online Library of Liberty

“There Is No Such Thing as Ideal Theory”, 33(1-2) Social Philosophy & Policy 312-333 (Oct 2016)


"Pluralism without Privilege? Corps Intermédiaires, Civil Society, and the Art of Association," forthcoming in Naomi R. Lamoreaux and John J. Wallis, eds., Organizations, Civil Society, and the Roots of Development, NBER/ University of Chicago Press

“Toward a Non-Lockean Libertarianism”, forthcoming in Jason Brennan, Bas van der Vossen, and David Schmidtz, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism

“Against Fraternity: Democracy Without Solidarity”, final version forthcoming in Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, eds., The Strains of Commitment: The Political Sources of Solidarity in Diverse Societies, Oxford University Press. (The linked version is a much earlier draft, but the final version isn't available online.)

"Cotton, Coercion, and Capitalism," review of Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton, in Reason

Review of Jeremy Waldron, Political Political Theory, forthcoming in The Review of Politics (not yet online)

"Authoritarianism and Post-Truth Politics," Niskanen Center

"The Defense of Liberty Can't Do Without Identity Politics," Niskanen Center

(I've joined the Niskanen Center's project on revitalizing liberalism, and will be writing a lot more for them.)

"Safe spaces, academic freedom, and the university as a complex association," lecture at Georgia State University.

(I gave other talks at Texas A&M, Princeton, Harvard, Chicago, Oxford, King's College London, APSA, Liberty Fund, and Yale, mostly based on one of the papers linked to above except that APSA and Yale were a draft on "Satirical Enlightenment," and Harvard was remarks on Nancy Rosenblum's On the Side of Angels for her retirement conference.)

Podcast of a discussion of Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom at George Mason University

Editing:
Entries in the Oxford Handbook of Classics in Contemporary Political Theory that were published online in 2016 were:

• Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: An Study in Moral TheoryJohn R. Wallach
• Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic TheoryEric MacGilvray
• Joseph Raz, The Morality of FreedomColin Bird
• Charles Taylor, Sources of the SelfMichael Zuckert
• G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History—A DefencePeter Dietsch
• Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of AnarchismAnna Stilz
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Second SexLori Marso
• Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and MethodJoshua Foa Dienstag
• H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of LawMatthew H. Kramer
• Axel Honneth, The Struggle for RecognitionD. Clifton Mark
• Leo Strauss, Natural Right and HistoryRyan Balot
• Will Kymlicka, Multicultural CitizenshipJeff Spinner-Halev
• Bonnie Honig, Political Theory and the Displacement of PoliticsNicholas Tampio
• Sheldon Wolin, Politics and VisionLucy Cane
• C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to LockeHugh Breakey
• Michael Walzer, Spheres of JusticeMargaret Moore
• Carole Pateman, The Sexual ContractMary G. Dietz

My course on medieval and Renaissance political theory was recognized by the Political Science Students' Association as "Political theory course of the year" for 2016-17, which absolutely delighted me.

Other things with which I was involved:
The Yan P. Lin Centre for the Study of Freedom and Global Orders in the Ancient and Modern Worlds was formally inaugurated with a lecture by Orlando Patterson. The Research Group on Constitutional Studies hosted lectures by Jenna Bednar and Jack Jackson as well as a debate on "Individualism, Liberty, and Self-Ownership" between Cécile Fabre and Eric Mack and the Annual Law and Religion Roundtable. The Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique (GRIPP) maintained its usual busy schedule; I'll look ahead a bit and note that the submission deadline for the GRIPP book manuscript workshop prize is January 15. 

To conclude the year, I got the gift of thoughtful and engaged readership from Adam Gurri in "Jacob Levy's Liberalism of Tragedy."

More looking ahead, to the beginning and end of 2017:

I will be speaking on “Justice in Babylon” at the January 5-7 2017 annual meeting of the UK and Ireland Association for Political Thought at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, in a lecture sponsored by the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP).

In December 2017 I will be the Dan and Gwen Taylor Fellow visiting in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago (New Zealand).

New website

It seems pretty unlikely that any of the 33 people who still subscribe to this blog via RSS are need to know this, or that if they need to, they don't already (am I FB friends will all 33 of you?), but it seems like proper online ettiquette to post this: I have a new website at http://jacobtlevy.com. I'm finally giving up on the frames-based one that has kept the same basic structure, look, and base HTML code (which I wrote myself) since late 1996. At some point, even I recognize that unselfconscious retro becomes kitsch becomes the suspicion that I'm doing the equivalent of putting my CV on a geocities page. This 2002-era blog will stick around for occasional use, though.

Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom reviews

A few new reviews of RPF,, so I'm making a post here with the overall list that I can update from time to time.

Melissa Schwartzberg in The New Rambler Review
Mark Koyama in Public Choice
Nicholas Tampio in Theory & Event,
Benjamin Hertzberg in Contemporary Political Theory
Andrew Norton in Policy
Roderick T. Long in Reason

Other RPF content:
Interview on the "Free Thoughts" podcast with Aaron Ross Powell and Trevor Burrell
at Penn, April 16, 2015
Roundtable at APSA, September 3 2015
at Duke, September 24 2015

Free Thoughts podcast about Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom

I was interviewed by Cato's Aaron Ross Powell and Trevor Burrus for the http://libertarianism.org podcast "Free Thoughts" about Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom. Our hourlong discussion is available as a podcast or online audio here.

Political theory (and related) journals impact factors, 2014

This is one of those things I put here some years and not others, depending on whether it occurs to me. Folding together information from the poli sci, ethics, and law Journal Citation Reports (TM) from Thomson-Reuters Web of Science, on the journals that regularly publish theory, so that it's all available in one place for theorists. Note that Impact Factors have been shown by the Scholar General to be hazardous to your intellectual health. Use in moderation and with caution. Impact Factors can be useful to have on hand for reporting to various administrative bodies, but they are certainly overused and misused in a variety of ways. I mean to make the former easier, not to endorse the latter. This is not a substitute for a substantive assessment of quality, and this ranking has very close to no correlation with my own ranking of quality. Also note that, as always, a number of important journals including The Review of Politics and History of Political Thought are missing from these rankings altogether. American Political Science Review: 3.688, 2nd in Political Science
American Journal of Political Science: 3.269, 4th in PS
Annual Review of Political Science: 3.140, 5th in PS
Journal of Politics: 2.255, 9th in PS
Perspectives on Politics: 2.132, 11th in PS
British Journal of Political Science: 1.987, 15th in PS
Philosophy & Public Affairs: 1.273, 40th in PS, 10th in Ethics
Political Research Quarterly: 1.149, 47th in PS
Ethics: 1.140, 13th in Ethics
International Theory: 1.051, 52nd in PS
Political Studies: 0.939, 59th in PS
Journal of Political Philosophy, 0.870, 67th in PS, 21st in Ethics
Polity, 0.642, 92nd in PS
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 0.641, 72nd in Law
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 0.588, 30th in Ethics
Political Theory, 0.576, 99th in PS
Law & Philosophy, 0.469, 34th in Ethics, 90th in Law
Ethics & International Affairs, 0.453, 110th in PS, 37th in Ethics
Contemporary Political Theory, 0.367, 124th in PS
Critical Review, 0.320, 130th in PS
Journal of Moral Philosophy, 0.275, 43rd in Ethics
Social Philosophy & Policy, 0.255, 44th in Ethics
Politics Philosophy & Economics, 0.214, 139th in PS, 47th in Ethics
Journal of Social Philosophy, 0.190, 49th in Ethics

Mark Koyama reviews Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom

in Public Choice.

AAAS 2015

Another year, another round of elections to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that includes no political theorists. I'm not sure any theorist has been elected from within political science in the past six years. (There have been people elected from within philosophy, history, or law who are also political theorists.) That also means another year in which Michael Walzer in particular hasn't been elected. In the empirical fields we're starting to see a generation change in the people who are elected: PhDs in the 1990s are starting to turn up. In political theory, I don't immediately see anyone with a PhD after 1980, and there are still conspicuous omissions that ought to be rectified from the generation before that.

RPF reviews

This seems a little too openly self-promotional for BHL, but: see Todd Seavey on my new book at his blog, and Melissa Schwartzberg at The New Rambler Review, a new review site edited by Adrian Vermeule, Blakeley Vermeule, and Eric Posner.

Comments on Indiana

Setting politics aside to start with: I'm unsurprisingly a strong supporter of the original Religious Freedom Restoration Act and its state-level counterparts that sought to protect religious believers against state interference of the sort that was legalized by Smith v Oregon. I'm much more uneasy about RFRA defenses in civil lawsuits between two private parties. There is a lot to be said for having a general, impersonal private law, such that I don't have to know the identity of the other party in order to know the law that will govern our transaction. I've quoted this before in a related context; recall Voltaire's classic statement of the doux commerce thesis:

Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There thee Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word. At the breaking up of this pacific and free assembly, some withdraw to the synagogue, and others to take a glass. This man goes and is baptized in a great tub, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: that man has his son’s foreskin cut off, whilst a set of Hebrew words (quite unintelligible to him) are mumbled over his child. Others retire to their churches, and there wait for the inspiration of heaven with their hats on, and all are satisfied.

That's a major, valuable civil accomplishment, and not to be thrown away lightly. If I can't transact with people on the same terms because each of us is potentially carrying around a religiously-specific contract or tort law, that's a real loss. I don't say that a unified private law is required by justice or abstract principle; I'm too much of a pluralist and a multiculturalist for that. But I think we have reason to be very nervous about abandoning it, and reason to treat lightly and deliberately. I do not get the feeling that the trend toward super-RFRAs that extend to private transactions has been adopted with due care. As to private-sector discrimination, I'm of the view that private businesses should be free to refuse customers, subject to two categories of exceptions: (a) if the firms are common carriers or (in the common law sense) public accommodations rather than ordinary private retailers and (b) in the United States, due to the constitutional and historical distinctiveness of Jim Crow and its melding of public and private discrimination, discrimination on the basis of race. I think the trend to treat bans on private-sector discrimination outside of public accommodations and common carriers as the rule, rather than a unique exception demanded by the unique shape of Jim Crow, has been a serious mistake. But just because I think that the florist and the wedding-cake baker ought to be free to refuse customers in general doesn't mean that I think "antidiscrimination statute governing sexual orientation plus highly particular religious exemption" is a good second-best. Sometimes a legal kludge can make for a tolerable compromise. Sometimes when one area of law is broken, bending another can get you roughly where you should be. I'm not at all convinced that that's the case here. Writing an exemption to antidiscrimination law specifically for Christians who don't approve of homosexuality is ugly; and the generalized version we see in RFRAs like Indiana's does damage (the scale of which we can't yet guess) to the generality of the private law. Now unbracketing the politics: A pox on both your houses. There's a tremendous amount of deliberate and inflammatory misinformation flying around-- on one side, as if the IRFRA were nothing but a license to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, and on the other as if there were no relevant differences between IRFRA and other RFRAs. (Most state RFRas don't apply to horizontal suits between private parties; there's a circuit split on whether to interpret the federal RFRA as so applying, but the statute doesn't say that it does.) George Stephanopolous yesterday went after Mike Pence with what he clearly thought was the very clever demand to get a yes or no answer to the question of whether it's now legal to discriminate against gays and lesbians in Indiana, when a) It already was; Indiana doesn't have a statewide ban on private sector discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (there are city- and county-level laws), and b) the right answer is not to know the answer, as all RFRAs prescribe a standard for judicial review rather than predetermining answers. It's up to a competent court to adjudicate whether there is a compelling state interest in preventing discrimination against a particular gay person by a particular conservative religious believer in a particular transaction. On the other hand, Pence and the bill's legislative supporters are obviously being disingenuous as hell about the motivation for passing a RFRA with this particular shape at this particular time. It is no secret that, politically, in Indiana, right now, this RFRA is centrally about same-sex marriage. People who have, in the last two years, unsuccessfully defended a ban on same-sex marriage in federal court and unsuccessfully tried to constitutionalize that ban make unconvincing defenders of liberty; they're just switching legal strategies. By the same token, and as I've said before, the newfound desire for opponents of same-sex marriage to defend pluralism and compromise rings very hollow.

Both of those requirements — compelling government interest, least burdensome means — are open to a considerable degree of interpretation, which is of course by design: That is what allows a modus vivendi to emerge.[...] Gay-rights activism is, just at the moment, very much oriented toward preventing the emergence of any social compromise on the matter of homosexual marriage, which is why tradition-minded florists and bakers, generally conservative Christians, are being targeted for prosecution as enemies of civil rights.

The anti-same-sex-marriage movement during its ascendancy in the 1990s and 2000s was viciously and hatefully maximalist. Imagine the different history of America if conservatives in the late 1990s had energetically supported civil unions provided that they not use the word "marriage," instead of pursuing the most aggressive and restrictionist DOMAs they could get away with in each context, such that where conservative majorities were strongest even ordinary contractual rights that might seem too much like marriage were prohibited, instead of mobilizing boycotts of firms that offered same-sex couples employment benefits! As it is, their defense of private sector liberty and the pluralism it makes possible is many days late and many dollars short. It kicked in only when, starting in the mid-2000s, the political tide turned. That shouldn't change our view of the right outcome; some particular cake baker shouldn't lose his religious liberty because the movement that's defending him now makes hypocritical arguments. But it does mean that the violin I hear playing when conservatives complain about the supposedly totalizing and compromise-rejecting agenda of same-sex-marriage supporters is very very small indeed. Update: Michael Tanner offers some thoughts in a very similar spirit.

Book offer for students

I have some extra copies of books to which I contributed sitting around the office. Anthony Laden and David Owen, eds., Multiculturalism and Political Theory James Fleming and Jacob T. Levy, eds., NOMOS LV: Federalism and Subsidiarity Avigail Eisenberg and Jeff Spinner-Halev, eds., Minorities Within Minorities Will Kymlicka and Alan Patten eds., Language Rights and Political Theory Better to get them into the hands of people who will read them. So: The first eight current students (or postdocs) who buy a copy of Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom after this post goes up, and who forward me their proof-of-purchase e-mail, can name one of the above books and I'll send it to them. (Actually, please name a first and a second choice in case there's clustering; I'll also update this post to indicate when each of the volumes runs out.) The cheapest way to buy RPF is directly from OUP: go here, and use discount code ASFLYQ6 at checkout for 30% off. For a while, at least, OUP was giving an additional 10% off to people making their first direct purchase through the website. If that's still true, then it comes to $US 30 or so. E-mail address is jtlevy [at] gmail.com .

Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom

Available in the US February 11 (in Canada and the UK, released December 2014). If you buy at that link, discount code ASFLYQ6 brings the price down to $35. For those who prefer Amazon: Canada, US

I'm # 6,400,831!

That means someone has pre-ordered Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom.  Maybe even two someones.

Blogging the Annual Review of Political Science

Over at BHL, I'm blogging my way through a round of reading the 2013 and 2014 Annual Reviews of Political Science this summer.

Nomos LV: Federalism and Subsidiarity

Now in print: Nomos LV: Federalism and Subsidiarity (hardcover or electronic).

Nomos LV: Federalism and Subsidiarity, edited by James E. Fleming and Jacob T. Levy

"In Federalism and Subsidiarity, a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars in political science, law, and philosophy address the application and interaction of the concept of federalism within law and government. What are the best justifications for and conceptions of federalism? What are the most useful criteria for deciding what powers should be allocated to national governments and what powers reserved to state or provincial governments? What are the implications of the principle of subsidiarity for such questions? What should be the constitutional standing of cities in federations? Do we need to “remap” federalism to reckon with the emergence of translocal and transnational organizations with porous boundaries that are not reflected in traditional jurisdictional conceptions? Examining these questions and more, this latest installation in the NOMOS series sheds new light on the allocation of power within federations."


CONTENTS
Preface
James E. Fleming and Jacob T. Levy

Part I. Federalism, Positive Benefits, and Negative Liberties

1. Defending Dual Federalism: A Self-Defeating Act
Sotirios A. Barber

2. Defending Dual Federalism: A Bad Idea, But Not Self-Defeating
Michael Blake

3. The Puzzling Persistence of Dual Federalism
Ernest A. Young

4. Foot Voting, Federalism, and Political Freedom
Ilya Somin

Part II. Constitutions, Federalism, and Subsidiarity

5. Federalism and Subsidiarity: Perspectives from U.S. Constitutional Law
Steven G. Calabresi and Lucy D. Bickford

6. Subsidiarity, the Judicial Role, and the Warren Court’s Contribution to the Revival of State Government
Vicki C. Jackson

7. Competing Conceptions of Subsidiarity
Andreas Føllesdal

8. Subsidiarity and Robustness: Building the Adaptive Efficiency of Federal Systems
Jenna Bednar

Part III. The Entrenchment of Local and Provincial Autonomy, Integrity, and Participation

9. Cities and Federalism
Daniel Weinstock

10. Cities, Subsidiarity, and Federalism
Loren King

11. The Constitutional Entrenchment of Federalism
Jacob T. Levy

Part IV. Remapping Federalism(s)
12. Federalism(s)’ Forms and Norms: Contesting Rights, De-Essentializing Jurisdictional Divides, and Temporizing Accommodations
Judith Resnik

RGCS postdoc 2014-15

The Research Group on Constitutional Studies at McGill University invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship for academic year 2014-15, renewable for 2015-16.  The Fellow will receive a stipend of $C 50,000 per year as well as a research fund and benefits.  

The Fellow will be expected to be in residence at McGill throughout the academic year, and to take an active part in workshops, conferences, and the intellectual life of RGCS and appropriate related research groups and centres (for political theorists, the Groupe de Recherche Interuniversitaire en Philosophie Politique, GRIPP).  The Fellow will also be expected to teach one course per year, most likely an upper-level undergraduate course on "Philosophy, Economics, and Society," though other matches between curricular needs and the Fellow's interests are possible.

The competition has a preference for political theorists, but is also open to those whose research in comparative politics or the public law field of political science falls within the theme of constitutional studies: constitutional design, constitutional law, and the operation of constitutional-level political institutions.  

Applicants should send a cover letter, CV, research statement (including a plan of the work to be pursued in the next two years), one writing sample of no more than 10,000 words, to RGCS.McGill@gmail.com by June 20, 2014, and should arrange for 2-3 letters of recommendation to be sent to the same address.  It is helpful and welcome if the cover letter specifies one or more political science members of RGCS' faculty roster ( http://www.mcgill.ca/rgcs/faculty ) who might be most appropriate as a research advisor, but the final match with an advisor or advisors may differ. 

The competition is open with respect to nationality; knowledge of French is an advantage but not required.  Other information on postdoctoral fellowships at McGill is available at http://www.mcgill.ca/gps/postdocs/fellows , including information on obtaining a Canadian work permit if necessary.  Ph.D. must have been awarded between January 1, 2010 and the date of application, or else the dissertation must have been successfully defended and all requirements for the degree completed by the date of application (i.e. with formal awarding of the degree still pending).

All e-mailed parts of an application including letters of recommendation should include the applicant's name in the subject line.  Applications submitted as one complete interfolio file are welcome. 

Montreal conferences this week

4/24-26
"Civic Freedom in an Age of Diversity: James Tully's Public Philosophy"

4/24-25
  "Ethical Dimensions of Monetary Policy"

"Taking Politics Less Seriously"

My talk at an Institute for Liberal Studies seminar on rejecting the fiction that the political world reflects one's will or one's soul is now online. Politics is something that happens to us, something we have to manage and live with as best we can; it has no natural tendency to reflect our wills or our consent, and the insistence that it does only empowers the people who want to falsely impute consent to us and claim to be harming us in our own name.

The Center for Ethics in Society Post Doctoral Fellowships

For 2014-2015, we seek up to three new post doctoral fellows. We welcome candidates with substantial normative research interests from philosophy, the social sciences, and the professional schools. We are especially interested in candidates with research interests in inequality, education, international justice, and environmental ethics, but we welcome all applicants with strong normative interests that have some practical implications. Scholars with a JD but no PhD are eligible to apply. Fellows will be involved in teaching, interact with undergraduates in the Ethics in Society Honors Program and help in fostering an inter-disciplinary ethics community across the campus. The appointment term is September 1, 2014 - August 31, 2015; however, the initial term may be renewed for an additional year. Applicants must have completed all requirements for their PhD by June 30, 2014. Candidates must also be no more than 3 years from the awarding of their degree (i.e., September 2011). The application deadline is January 9, 2014 (5:00pm Pacific Standard Time). Stanford University is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty. We welcome applications from women and members of minority groups, as well as others who would bring additional dimensions to the university's research and teaching missions. Salary is competitive. Please submit a CV, a writing sample (no more than 25 pages), three letters of recommendation, and a one-page research statement. For information on how to access the online system to submit your application material, visit our website https://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/postdoc-fellows/application-process. Contact person: Anne Newman arnewman@stanford.edu. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Center for Ethics in Society Post Doctoral TEACHING Fellowships For 2014-2015, we seek up to two new post doctoral teaching fellows. These teaching fellows are offered in conjunction with Stanford's new general education requirement, which requires all Stanford undergraduates to take at least one ethics course. Teaching fellows will assist in one class per quarter and will be asked to run up to two sections per quarter. The Ethics Teaching Fellows will be fully integrated into the programming of the Center. This fellowship provides an opportunity to work with great students in a variety of disciplines and develop ethics expertise across the curriculum. The appointment term is September 1, 2014 - August 31, 2015. Applicants must have completed all requirements for their PhD by June 30, 2014. Candidates must also be no more than 3 years from the awarding of their degree (i.e., September 2011). The application deadline is January 9, 2014 (5:00pm Pacific Standard Time). Stanford University is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty. We welcome applications from women and members of minority groups, as well as others who would bring additional dimensions to the university's research and teaching missions. Salary is competitive. Please submit a CV, a writing sample (no more than 25 pages), three letters of recommendation, and a teaching portfolio. For information on how to access the online system to submit your application, visit our website https://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/postdoc-fellows/application-process. Contact person: Anne Newman arnewman@stanford.edu.

Hither and yon: religious institutionalism at DePaul

Religious institutionalism conference at DePaul.