This timely and important book is the first serious work of philosophy to address the question: Do adults have a moral right to use drugs for recreational purposes? Many critics of the "war on drugs" denounce law enforcement as counterproductive and ineffective. Douglas Husak argues that the "war on drugs" violates the moral rights of adults who want to use drugs for pleasure, and that criminal laws against such use are incompatible with moral rights. This is not a polemical tract but a scrupulously argued work of philosophy that takes full account of all available data concerning drug use in...

This wide-ranging collection of essays by one of the foremost medical ethicists in the United States explores the claim that justification in ethics, whether of matters of theory or practice, involves achieving coherence or "reflective equilibrium" (as Rawls has called it) between our moral and nonmoral beliefs. Among the practical issues addressed in the volume are the design of health care institutions, the distribution of goods between the old and the young, and fairness in hiring and firing.

Robert E. Goodin, a philosopher with many books on political theory, public policy and applied ethics to his credit, defends utilitarianism against its critics and shows how it can be applied most effectively over a wide range of public policies. In discussions of such issues as paternalism, social welfare policy, international ethics, nuclear armaments, and international responses to the environment crisis, he demonstrates what a flexible tool his brand of utilitarianism can be in confronting the dilemmas of public policy in the real world.

This book is the most systematic, comprehensive and philosophically sophisticated discussion of police ethics yet published. It offers an in-depth analysis of the ethical values that police, as servants of the community, should uphold as they go about their task. The book considers the foundations and purpose of police authority in broad terms but also tackles specific problems such as accountability, the use of force, deceptive stratagems used to gain information or trap the criminally intentioned, corruption, and the tension between personal values and communal concerns.

This book argues for increased recognition of pregnancy, birthing and childrearing as social activities demanding simultaneously physical, intellectual, emotional and moral work from those who undertake them. Amy Mullin considers both parenting and paid childcare, and examines the impact of disability on this work. The first chapters contest misconceptions about pregnancy and birth such as the idea that pregnancy is only valued for its end result, and not for the process. Subsequent chapters focus on childcare provided in different circumstances and on the needs of both providers and...

This book conveys the breadth and interconnectedness of questions of justice--a rarity in contemporary moral and political philosophy. James P. Sterba argues that a minimal notion of rationality requires morality, and that a minimal libertarian morality requires the welfare and equal opportunity endorsed by welfare liberals and the equality endorsed by socialists, as well as a full feminist agenda. Feminist, racial, homosexual, and multicultural justice are also shown to be mutually supporting. The author further shows the compatibility between anthropocentric and biocentric environmental...

This book is a comprehensive and fully up-to-date account of what it means to try to quantify health in distributing resources for health care. It offers an elegant new approach to comparing the costs and benefits of medical interventions. Erik Nord questions Cost-Utility Analysis (CUA) and the feasibility of measuring patients' quality of life meaningfully in numerical terms. He presents an alternative approach called cost-value analysis in which representative samples of the general public express preferences among different health-care programs. This will be a book of particular interest...

This book argues for increased recognition of pregnancy, birthing and childrearing as social activities demanding simultaneously physical, intellectual, emotional and moral work from those who undertake them. Amy Mullin considers both parenting and paid childcare, and examines the impact of disability on this work. The first chapters contest misconceptions about pregnancy and birth such as the idea that pregnancy is only valued for its end result, and not for the process. Subsequent chapters focus on childcare provided in different circumstances and on the needs of both providers and...

With the passing of the Cold War, a chapter in the history of nuclear deterrence has come to an end. Nuclear weapons remain, however, and nuclear deterrence will again be practiced. Rather than simply assume that the policy of deterrence has worked we need to learn the proper lessons from history in order to ensure that its mistakes are not repeated. Professor Lee furnishes us with the kind of analysis that will enable us to learn those lessons. This book is the first post Cold War assessment of nuclear deterrence. It provides a comprehensive normative understanding of nuclear deterrence...

The traditional military-territorial model of the nation state defines international duties in terms of protecting citizens' property from foreign threats. In this book about the principles of the U.S. agricultural policy and foreign aid, Professor Thompson replaces this model with the notion of the trading state that sees its role in terms of the establishment of international institutions that stabilize and facilitate cultural and intellectual, as well as commercial exchanges between nations. The argument focuses on protectionist challenges to foreign aid and development assistance...