Very diverse societies pose real problems for Rawlsian models of public reason. This is for two reasons: first, public reason is unable accommodate diverse perspectives in determining a regulative ideal. Second, regulative ideals are unable to respond to social change. While models based on public reason focus on the justification of principles, this book suggests that we need to orient our normative theories more toward discovery and experimentation. The book develops a unique approach to social contract theory that focuses on diverse perspectives. It offers a new moral stance that author Ryan Muldoon calls, "The View From Everywhere," which allows for substantive, fundamental moral disagreement. This stance is used to develop a bargaining model in which agents can cooperate despite seeing different perspectives. Rather than arguing for an ideal contract or particular principles of justice, Muldoon outlines a procedure for iterated revisions to the rules of a social contract. It expands Mill's conception of experiments in living to help form a foundational principle for social contract theory. By embracing this kind of experimentation, we move away from a conception of justice as an end state, and toward a conception of justice as a trajectory. Listen to Robert Talisse interview Ryan Muldoon about Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World on the podcast, New Books in Philosophy: http://tinyurl.com/j9oq324 Also, read Ryan Muldoon’s related Niskanen Center article, "Diversity and Disagreement are the Solution, Not the Problem," published Jan. 10, 2017: https://niskanencenter.org/blog/diversity-disagreement-solution-not-problem/

Despite decades of attempts and the best intentions of its members, the United States Supreme Court has failed to develop a coherent jurisprudence regarding the state’s proper relationship to the individual. Without some objective standard upon which to ground jurisprudence, decisions have moved along a spectrum between freedom and authority and back again, affecting issues as diverse as individual contractual liberties and the right to privacy. Social Contract Theory in American Jurisprudence seeks to reintroduce the lessons of modern political philosophy to offer a solution for this variable application of legal principle and to lay the groundwork for a jurisprudence consistent in both theory and practice. Thomas R. Pope’s argument examines two exemplary court cases, Lochner v. New York and West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, and demonstrates how the results of these cases failed to achieve the necessary balance of liberty and the public good because they considered the matter in terms of a dichotomy. Pope explores our constitution’s roots in social contract theory, looking particularly to the ideas of Thomas Hobbes for a jurisprudence that is consistent with the language and tradition of the Constitution, and that is also more effectually viable than existing alternatives. Pope concludes with an examination of recent cases before the Court, grounding his observations firmly within the developments of ongoing negotiation of jurisprudence. Addressing the current debate between individual liberty and government responsibility within the context of contemporary jurisprudence, Pope considers the implications of a Hobbesian founding for modern policy. This book will be particularly relevant to scholars of Constitutional Law, the American Founding, and Modern Political Theory.

Modern Social Contract Theory provides an exposition and evaluation of major work in social contract theory from 1950 to the present. It locates the central themes of that theory in the intellectual legacy of utilitarianism, particularly the problems of defining principles of justice and of showing the grounds of moral obligation. It demonstrates how theorists responded in a novel way to the dilemmas articulated in utilitarianism, developing in their different approaches a constructivist method in ethics, a method that aimed to vindicate a liberal, democratic and just political order. A distinctive feature of the book is its comparative approach. By placing the works of Barry, Buchanan and Tullock, Harsanyi, Gauthier, Grice, Rawls, and Scanlon alongside one another, similarities and differences are brought out, most notably in the way in which principles are derived by each author from the contractual construction as well as the extent to which the obligation to adopt those principles can be rationally grounded. Each theory is placed in its particular intellectual context. Special attention is paid to the contrasting theories of rationality adopted by the different authors, whether that be utility theory or a deliberative conception of rationality, with the intention of assessing how far the principles advanced can be justified by reference to the hypothetical choices of rational contracting agents. The book concludes with a discussion of some principal objections to the enterprise of contract theory, and offers its own programme for the future of that theory taking the form of the empirical method.