In Their Own Words

Illiberal Justice is the first comprehensive, book-length critique of the writings of the late John Rawls, one of the most influential democratic political theorists of the twentieth century. David Schaefer, who is Professor of Political Science at Holy Cross College (Worcester, MA), argues that Rawls's widely acclaimed "theory of justice" constitutes a troubling distortion of the liberal political theory of natural rights and consent-based government bequeathed by the American Founders, as well as constituting a misrepresentation of the philosophic enterprise itself in which the pursuit of truth is sacrificed to a concern with "consensus." Schaefer contends that Rawls's failure to ground his teaching about justice in a serious analysis of human nature or an empirical grasp of political life is symptomatic of a larger crisis within contemporary liberal political and jurisprudential theorizing.