Abortion. Physician-assisted suicide. Same-sex marriages. Embryonic stem-cell research. Poverty. Crime. What is a faithful Christian response? The God of the Bible is unquestionably a God of justice. Yet Christians have had their differences as to how human government and the church should bring about a just social order. Although Christians share many deep and significant theological convictions, differences that threaten to divide them have often surrounded the matter of how the church collectively and Christians individually ought to engage the public square. What is the mission of the church? What is the purpose of human government? How ought they to be related to each other? How should social injustice be redressed? The five noted contributors to this volume answer these questions from within their distinctive Christian theological traditions, as well as responding to the other four positions. Through the presentations and ensuing dialogue we come to see more clearly what the differences are, where their positions overlap and why they diverge. The contributors and the positions taken include Clarke E. Cochran: A Catholic Perspective Derek H. Davis: A Classical Separation Perspective Ronald J. Sider: An Anabaptist Perspective Corwin F. Smidt: A Principled Pluralist Perspective J. Philip Wogaman: A Social Justice Perspective This book will be instructive for anyone seeking to grasp the major Christian alternatives and desiring to pursue a faithful corporate and individual response to the social issues that face us.

This book theorizes the ways in which states that are presumed to be weaker in the international system use the International Criminal Court (ICC) to advance their security and political interests. Ultimately, it contends that African states have managed to instrumentally and strategically use the international justice system to their advantage, a theoretical framework that challenges the “justice cascade” argument. The empirical work of this study focuses on four major themes around the intersection of power, states' interests, and the global governance of atrocity crimes: firstly, the strategic use of self-referrals to the ICC; secondly, complementarity between national and the international justice system; thirdly, the limits of state cooperation with international courts; and finally the use of international courts in domestic political conflicts. This book is valuable to students, scholars, and researchers who are interested in international relations, international criminal justice, peace and conflict studies, human rights, and African politics.

Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan sets forth a theory of economic justice—meritocracy—which rests upon a desert principle and is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, meritocracy is grounded in empirical research on how human beings think, intuitively, about justice. Research in social psychology and experimental economics reveals that people simply don’t think that social goods should be distributed equally, nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people believe that rewards should reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists.

Offering a new political theory combining elements from the Marxist and liberal traditions, this book presents a disturbing view of the contemporary state at war with itself. This internal conflict stems from the state's having the double task of spurring on the economy and protecting the welfare and rights of all its citizens. Such conflict does not end at national boundaries but extends through the system of any imperial state. This perspective illuminates the fractures and instability within the imperial system.

The Game of Justice argues that justice is politics, that politics is something close to ordinary people and not located in an abstract and distant institution known as the State, and that the concept of the game provides a new way to appreciate the possibilities of creating justice. Justice, as a game, is played in a challenging environment that makes serious demands on the participants, in terms of self-knowledge and individual self-government, and also in terms of understanding social behavior. What the term game provides is a radical opening of all established institutions: the status quo is neither absolute nor inevitable, but is the result of past political controversy, a result created by the winners to express their victory. At the same time, the game of justice, like all games, is played over and over again, with winners and losers changing places over time. This serves as encouragement to past losers and provides a cautionary reminder to past winners.

In the minds of many, the provision of justice and security has long been linked to the state. To ask whether non-state institutions could deliver those services on their own, without the aid of coercive taxation and a monopoly franchise, runs the risk of being branded as naive anarchism or dangerous radicalism. Defenders of the state's monopoly on lawmaking and law enforcement typically assume that any alternative arrangement would favor the rich at the expense of the poor--or would lead to the collapse of social order and ignite a war. Questioning how well these beliefs hold up to scrutiny, this book offers a powerful rebuttal of the received view of the relationship between law and government. The book argues not only that the state is unnecessary for the establishment and enforcement of law, but also that non-state institutions would fight crime, resolve disputes, and render justice more effectively than the state, based on their stronger incentives.

From social media to mortgage-backed securities, innovation carries both risk and opportunity. Groups of people win, and lose, when innovation changes the ground rules. Looking beyond formal politics, this new book by Cristie Ford argues that we need to recognize innovation, and financial innovation in particular, as a central challenge for regulation. Regulation is at the leading edge of politics and policy in ways that we have not yet fully grasped. Seemingly innocuous regulatory design choices have clear and profound practical ramifications for many of our most cherished social commitments. Innovation is a complex phenomenon that needs to be understood not only in technical terms, but also in human ones. Using financial regulation as her primary example, Ford argues for a fresh approach to regulation, which recognizes innovation for the regulatory challenge that it is, and which binds our cherished social values and our regulatory tools ever more tightly together.