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Just Ideas: Transformative Ideals of Justice in Ethical and Political Thought

Series Editors: Drucilla Cornell, Rutgers University, and Roger Berkowitz, Bard College

In his novel A Frolic of His Own, William Gaddis writes: “Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this world, you have the law.” Justice, Gaddis suggests, is a fata morgana, an abstraction, a frolic of one’s own. Justice, as many have argued, is “just an idea,” one that has little if any significance in the real world.

Since the question of justice is one of human scope, the books in the series will encompass the breadth of humanist scholarship, mixing philosophy, literature, history, politics, and law. In contrast to those who understand law and justice to be simply various ideologies marshaled in the struggle for political power, the authors in this series insist that the idea of justice itself is meaningful for the legal and political activity of building a better and more human world.