Robert Alexy is Professor of Public Law and Legal Philosophy at the Christian Albrechts University, Kiel, Germany. Between 1994 and 1998 he was President of the German Section of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. He is known and admired worldwide as a leading philosopher. Julian Rivers was appointed Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol after studying at the University of Cambridge and the University of Gottingen. This is his first book.