Justification and Legitimacy brings together a closely related set of my papers in social, political, and legal philosophy. All of the papers assembled here concern the basic rights and obligations of persons, citizens, and states, and nearly all express my most recent thoughts on these subjects. All of these papers also exemplify or defend one particular approach to the fundamental questions of social, political, and legal philosophy. This approach begins with an examination of the natural moral condition of persons: that is, an examination of the basic rights and duties persons possess and of the special moral relationships into which they can enter (or in which they can find themselves), independent of their roles as members of organized political societies. The basic assumptions on which this approach is founded are: (1) that all persons, whenever and wherever born, begin their moral lives (upon rising to the status of full moral agents) with a substantial body of moral rights and duties, and (2) that the rights in question centrally include, and perhaps add up to no more than, a broad right of self government or independence (both from other persons and groups and from states).

A person's standing as a legitimate subject of some government must then be understood, on this approach, as the result of a special kind of departure from that person's natural condition. The political realm is to be analyzed in terms of permissible transitions from the natural condition to the condition of political membership.