In this book the author argues that moral principles are principles of rational choice. According to the usual view of choice, a rational person selects what is likely to give the greatest expectation of value or utility. But in many situations, if each person chooses in this way, everyone will be worse off than need be. Instead, Professor Gauthier proposes a principle whereby choice is made on an agreed basis of co-operation, rather than according to what would give the individual the greatest expectation of value. He shows that such a principle not only ensures mutual benefit and fairness, thus satisfying the standards of morality, but also that each person may actually expect greater utility by adhering to morality, even though the choice did not have that end primarily in view. In resolving what may appear to be a paradox, the author establishes morals on the firm foundation of reason.

"Symposium: The Meaning of the Civil Rights Revolution" is, in effect, a new and extensive book of contemporary thought on civil rights by many of today's leading writers on the Constitution. In February 2014, the Yale Law Journal held a symposium at Yale Law School marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the simultaneous publication of Bruce Ackerman’s We the People: The Civil Rights Revolution (2014). Contributors' essays reflected on the origins or status of the American civil rights project, using Ackerman’s book as a focal point or a foil. Those essays are collected as the June 2014 issue, the final issue of the academic year. The contents are: • We the People: Each and Every One — Randy E. Barnett • Reactionary Rhetoric and Liberal Legal Academia — Justin Driver • Popular Sovereignty and the United States Constitution: Tensions in the Ackermanian Program — Sanford Levinson • The Neo-Hamiltonian Temptation — David A. Strauss • The Civil Rights Canon: Above and Below — Tomiko Brown-Nagin • Changing the Wind: Notes Toward a Demosprudence of Law and Social Movements — Lani Guinier & Gerald Torres • Protecting Civil Rights in the Shadows — David A. Super • Universalism and Civil Rights (with Notes on Voting Rights After Shelby) — Samuel R. Bagenstos • Separate Spheres — Cary Franklin • Ackerman's Civil Rights Revolution and Modern American Racial Politics — Rogers M. Smith • Rethinking Rights After the Second Reconstruction — Richard Thompson Ford • A Revolution at War with Itself? Preserving Employment Preferences from Weber to Ricci — Sophia Z. Lee • Have We Moved Beyond the Civil Rights Revolution? — John D. Skrentny • Equal Protection in the Key of Respect — Deborah Hellman • Ackerman’s Brown — Randall L. Kennedy • The Anti-Humiliation Principle and Same-Sex Marriage — Kenji Yoshino • De-Schooling Constitutional Law — Bruce Ackerman The issue, the eighth and final one of Volume 123, also includes a cumulative Index to the entire volume's titles and authors. As with previous digital editions of Yale Law Journal available from Quid Pro Books, features include active Tables of Contents (including links in each Essay's own table), linked footnotes and URLs, and proper ebook and Bluebook formatting.

Michael Moehler develops a novel multilevel social contract theory. In contrast to existing theories in the liberal tradition, it does not merely assume a restricted form of reasonable moral pluralism, but is tailored to the conditions of deeply morally pluralistic societies which may be populated by liberal moral agents, nonliberal moral agents, and, according to the traditional understanding of morality, nonmoral agents alike. Moehler draws on the history of the social contract tradition, especially the work of Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Rawls, and Gauthier, as well as on the work of some of the critics of this tradition, such as Sen and Gaus. Moehler's two-level contractarian theory holds that morality in its best contractarian version for the conditions of deeply morally pluralistic societies entails Humean, Hobbesian, and Kantian moral features. The theory defines the minimal behavioral restrictions that are necessary to ensure, compared to violent conflict resolution, mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in deeply morally pluralistic societies. The theory minimizes the problem of compliance in morally diverse societies by maximally respecting the interests of all members of society. Despite its ideal nature, the theory is, in principle, applicable to the real world and, for the conditions described, most promising for securing mutually beneficial peaceful long-term cooperation in a world in which a fully just society, due to moral diversity, is unattainable. If Rawls' intention was to carry the traditional social contract argument to a higher level of abstraction, then the two-level contractarian theory brings it back down to earth.

This Element provides a systematic defense of moral contractarianism as a distinct approach to the social contract. It elucidates, in comparison to moral conventionalism and moral contractualism, the distinct features of moral contractarianism, its scope, and conceptual and practical challenges that concern the relationship between morality and self-interest, the problems of assurance and compliance, rule-following, counterfactualism, and the nexus between morals and politics. It argues that, if appropriately conceived, moral contractarianism is conceptually coherent, empirically sound, and practically relevant, and has much to offer to contemporary moral philosophy.

This collection of essays by one of America's leading legal theorists show how traditional problems of philosophy can be understood more clearly when considered in terms of law economics and political science.