A commonly accepted criticism of the social contract approach to justifying political authority targets the notion of hypothetical consent. Hypothetical contracts, it is argued, are not binding; therefore hypothetical consent cannot justify political authority. I argue that although hypothetical consent may not be capable of creating political obligation, it has the power to legitimate political arrangements.

The aim of this bibliography is to present the most oomplete list of works on John Rawls's theory of justice available to date. The standard philosophical journals have been consulted, as listed in The Philosopher's Index, as well as journals in economics, law and political science. The bibliography contains 255 entries; 18 by Rawls, and 122 not listed in The Philosopher's Index.

In this paper I trace the development of one of the central debates of late twentieth-century moral philosophy—the debate between realism and what Rawls called “constructivism.” Realism, I argue, is a reactive position that arises in response to almost every attempt to give a substantive explanation of morality. It results from the realist’s belief that such explanations inevitably reduce moral phenomena to natural phenomena. I trace this belief, and the essence of realism, to a view about the nature of concepts—that it is the function of all concepts to describe reality. Constructivism may be understood as the alternative view that a normative concept refers schematically to the solution to a practical problem. A constructivist account of a concept, unlike a traditional analysis, is an attemptto work out the solution to that problem. I explain how the philosophies of Kant and Rawls can be understood on this model.

Although John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice does not deal specifically with the ethics of environmental concerns, it can generally be applied to give justification for the prudent and continent use of our natural resources. The argument takes two forms: one dealing with the immediate effects of environmental impact and the other, delayed effects. Immediate effects, which impact the present society, should besubject to environmental controls because they affect health and opportunity, social primary goods to be dispensed by society. Delayed environmental impacts, affecting future generations, are also subject to control because future generations have a just claim upon our natural resources-the generation to which a person belongs is an arbitrary contingency which should not exclude persons not yet born from consideration in the original contract of society.

The utilitarian argument of John Harris and the libertarian position of Ronald Green concerning genetic modifications of children omit a parental perspective. John Rawls proposes that the negotiators of obligations to future generations be viewed as heads of families. Drawing upon John Rawls, Erik Malmqvist, and Michael Sandel, I defend four claims: first, in seeking to balance social stability, autonomy, and general welfare the negotiators of obligations to future generations would assign priority to social stability; secondly, the negotiators would preserve a distinction between therapeutic and non-therapeutic human genetic modifications; thirdly, they would rule out non-therapeutic genetic modifications of children; finally, the negotiators would endorse a right not to be discriminated against on the basis of genotype.