The din and deadlock of public life in America--where insults are traded, slogans proclaimed, and self-serving deals made and unmade--reveal the deep disagreement that pervades our democracy. The disagreement is not only political but also moral, as citizens and their representatives increasingly ta[...]
To govern in a democracy, political leaders have to compromise. When they do not, the result is political paralysis--dramatically demonstrated by the gridlock in Congress in recent years. In The Spirit of Compromise, eminent political thinkers Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson show why compromise is s[...]
In America today, the problem of achieving racial justice - whether through 'color-blind' policies or through affirmative action - provokes more noisy name-calling than fruitful deliberation. In "Color Conscious", K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, two eminent moral and political philosophers, seek [...]
The most widely debated conception of democracy in recent years is deliberative democracy - the idea that citizens or their representatives owe each other mutually acceptable reasons for the laws they enact. Two prominent voices in the ongoing discussion are Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson. In "Why [...]
We are all familiar with the image of the immensely clever judge who discerns the best rule of common law for the case at hand. According to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a judge like this can maneuver through earlier cases to achieve the desired aim - 'distinguishing one prior case on [...]