Human enhancement aims to make people ‘better than well’ by interventions in the human genome. I canvas four moral arguments against this – from (1) autonomy, (2) dignity, (3) inequality and (4) mastery – concluding that none is probative. Argument (1) overestimates the cost to autonomy of genetic technologies and underestimates the degree to which ordinary moral training is heteronomous. Argument (2) drives too sharp a wedge between the natural and the artefactual and thereby ignores the extent to which we already treat the body as a site of ameliorative intervention. Argument (3) invokes the spectre of a ‘genetic underclass’ that is ‘gene-poor’, but I argue that this can be guarded against by education and government policy. Argument (4) tends to rest on persuasive description and on consequentialist claims that are empirically weakly supported. I end by mounting my own, formal, argument against human enhancement. This holds that it collapses into transhumanism, this being an ultimately incoherent project, one that abandons the idea of human nature and with it any criteria for determining what it is to be ‘better than well’. Finally, I corroborate this argument from incoherence by unpacking a paper by Groll and Lott.

This chapter explores two kinds of vulnerability which appear to cause a problem for neo-republicanism as a form of relational egalitarianism: the vulnerabilities involved in intimate and caring relationships, and those generated by complex economic and social processes like the global financial system. I argue that the standard neo-republican strategy of constraining arbitrary power can successfully account for the former; the value of the vulnerabilities involved in intimate relations depends on the presence of constraints which prevent power being exercised in ways which do not track relevant interests. But this approach is less successful in dealing with the latter kind of vulnerability, which generates cases in which agents can be subject to domination without suffering the loss of status, and accompanying inequality, usually characteristic of domination. I argue that while these cases count as exceptions to the standard relationship between non-domination and egalitarianism, neo-republicanism remains a form of relational egalitarianism.

Paternalistic interference in an older person’s choices or actions appears to relegate the needs, values, and interests of that person as less valuable than the judgement of others about what is in the older person’s interests. For relational egalitarians, concerned to promote a society in which people stand in democratic relations of equality, paternalism prima facie undermines relational equality. This chapter draws on exploration of the sources of older people’s vulnerability and dependence on others for care, to better understand when and why paternalistic interference is objectionable. Objectionable paternalistic interference, on my view, occurs where it is either an effect of social relations of domination and oppression that prevent people from having their needs met without autonomy-undermining interference or it creates the conditions under which domination, exploitation, and oppression flourish, generating pathogenic vulnerabilities, including the risk of the person being denied the services they require to meet their needs.

This chapter describes the law governing transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports. It compares the interpretations of Title IX’s prohibition on sex discrimination by the Obama and Biden administrations on the one hand and the Trump administration on the other. It explores the state laws regarding transgender girls’ inclusion or exclusion that have arisen against the backdrop of Title IX ambiguity. Finally, the chapter examines what courts have said about what Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause require with regard to transgender girls’ inclusion in or exclusion from girls’ sports.

This chapter argues that even though we all have a pretty good idea of what is meant by the term ‘social class’, it is far from being a straightforward matter. After all, there is only tenuous agreement about exactly what it is, how prevalent it is, how it organises the life opportunities of our citizens and how best to study it. To make it more difficult still, this is a subject that many feel uncomfortable discussing, let alone applying to themselves or anyone else.

This chapter examines the life of Jesus of Nazareth and how his teachings, style of life, and legacy shaped western thought. Emphasizing Jesus as both a historical figure and a moral exemplar, it explores how early followers remembered him and how later premodern readers interpreted him through close readings of the New Testament. Drawing especially on the Gospel of Mark and the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, the chapter shows how Jesus gained authority not through institutional power but through humility, parables, miraculous acts, and a radical ethical vision. He preached inward sincerity over outward ritual, taught that all people possess dignity in the eyes of God, and urged his followers to model their lives on his own. Key themes include divine justice, the challenge of wealth and status, and the contrast between worldly and heavenly authority. Jesus emerges as a moral teacher, healer, and disruptor of conventional hierarchies. His parables and aphorisms – especially those in the Sermon on the Mount – became foundational to Christian ethics. The chapter concludes by noting how Jesus’ model of life and speech created a movement that profoundly transformed the cultural and moral framework of the West.

This chapter investigates the social dimension of individuality in Works of Love with a particular focus on the issue of human equality in the context of Kierkegaard’s contemporary age. The first part examines Kierkegaard’s critique in A Literary Review of the dominance of a numerical idea of equality in the modern age. This diagnosis forms the background for examining in the second part his radical ethical idea of neighbor love as the true human equality developed in Works of Love. The third part examines Kierkegaard’s criticism of the contemporary political struggle for social equality in Works of Love and in his journal observations on the communist idea of equality. I seek to bring out both strengths and weaknesses in Kierkegaard’s approach to human equality in a critical discussion of Kierkegaard’s example of a disregarded poor charwoman and his arguments against the political struggle for social equality.

The arguments of this book are intended to tackle the social injustices faced by people living with dementia, yet reflecting on the author’s social position reveals a tension. As the author is not a member of the social group this book concerns, they are engaging in an act of speaking for others: a practice that has received significant criticism, given the risks of contributing to oppression and stigma through misrepresentation. With this concern in mind, this chapter engages in a reflective exercise about the content of the book, highlighting ways in which the author’s social position may have negatively influenced its content and setting out the steps the author has taken to try to address this.

This chapter analyzes how social policy in China has contributed to the well-being of the middle class and their trust of the government. The author argues that if we examine not just China’s earlier reform period (1978–2003) and the fast-growing era (2003–2012), but also the sharp Left Turn in recent years (2012–present), it is hard to fit China’s social policy into the theories of productivism or developmental welfare state that are often associated with the East Asian countries. China’s welfare system is an instrumentalist model which is centered on maintaining the leadership of the Communist Party of China. With this in mind, social policies have been actively used in the past few years to support two mutually independent but intersecting intermediate goals: maintaining economic development and social stability. Both are vital to the party’s authority.

In both philosophical research and public discourse around dementia, issues of power and social status receive insufficient attention. The Introduction sets out how this book is aimed at filling this gap.

In medical ethics, there is a well-established debate about the authority of advance directives over people living with dementia, a dispute often cast as a clash between two principles: respecting autonomy and beneficence toward patients. This chapter, in highlighting underexplored issues of power and social status, argues that there need be only one principle in substitute decision-making: determining authenticity. This principle favours a substituted judgment standard in all cases and instructs decision-makers to determine what the patient would authentically prefer to happen – based not merely on the patient’s decisions but also on their present settled dispositions. Adhering to this principle entails that, in a significant range of cases, an advance directive can (and indeed ought to) be overruled.

The introductory chapter outlines the book’s central premise: disabled people have as much right to live in the world as the non-disabled. It introduces the human rights and critical disability studies methods used to interrogate the problem of disability discrimination throughout the life cycle, especially at the beginning and end of life. Along with providing an overview, the introductory chapter argues that the book is particularly needed because disability equal rights struggles remain marginal in mainstream bioethics and law.

Miscarriages of justice encompass more injustice than wrongful convictions or proven innocence. Proven innocence is the most severe rationing of justice, but it is popular, especially for non-lawyers and in mass imprisonment societies such as China and the United States. Originally used as a rationale for compensation in the United States, it now also rations post-conviction relief. It has been used to ration compensation in England since 2014 but was rejected in the 2024 Canadian reforms, creating a Miscarriage of Justice Review Commission. Some Australian states have been attracted to it in recent legislation, but the Chamberlain and Folbigg wrongful convictions have properly been corrected because of reasonable doubts about the guilt of the two women. Following Ronald Dworkin, there needs to be greater concern about inequality in the distribution of the risks of injustice. The danger of wrongful conviction reforms providing justice for a few while legitimating injustices for many is most acute in authoritarian societies such as China, but not absent in democracies. Comparative law, legal process and historical analysis can contribute to richer understandings of miscarriages of justice. Two different future scenarios, one that provides justice for less and another that provides justice for more, are outlined.

This chapter re-examines slavery and abolition in the writing and reception of the Declaration of Independence. Far from being marginal parts of the nation’s founding document, as previous generations of scholars asserted, both slavery and abolition proved to be essential to the making and meaning of the Declaration. Indeed, during and after the American Revolution, the Declaration testified to the nation’s high abolitionist ideals and the enduring problem of slavery in American statecraft. By examining not only Jefferson’s ideas about black freedom in the Revolutionary era but a wide range of reformers who meditated on it as well – including African American writers and reformers like Benjamin Banneker – this essay argues that the Declaration itself remains a testament to the conflicted nature of emancipation in the American mind.

Inter-Asian Law is starkly absent from constitutional accounts of reproductive rights in Asia. Instead, Asian jurisdictions tend to draw from the Global North, with the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade occupying norm status. To explicate the potential of Inter-Asian Law in transforming reproductive rights, an act of imagination is required, suspending Roe as the central comparative frame and introducing alternate, hypothetical referents from Asia. This chapter conducts this task at two stages. First, it develops imagination as a method of comparative constitutional law. Second, applying the imaginative method, it hypothesizes what reproductive rights might look like if Nepal served as a referent for India and India as a referent for Bangladesh. In documenting explicit shifts in the constitutional construction of these rights, the chapter cements the place of Inter-Asian Law.

The use of the different terms “miscarriages of justice,” “wrongful convictions,” “innocence” and “exoneration” in different countries is examined. The book’s research methodologies are explained. A comparative law methodology is used to highlight similarities and differences in different jurisdictions. Many of the immediate causes, such as mistaken eyewitness identification, false confessions and false forensic evidence, are basically similar. At the same time, remedies, including what is remedied, and some structural factors, such as prejudice and discrimination, often differ. A legal process methodology is used to examine the different contributions that courts, the executive and legislatures can make to the creation, prevention and remedying of miscarriages of justice. A historical approach is used to illustrate the longstanding role of racism and prejudice and to explore whether wrongful conviction reforms are a means of legitimating unjust systems. The normative values at stake in miscarriages of justice are outlined with a focus on equality and fair trial rights, including the presumption of innocence. The issue of balancing the risks of wrongful convictions and wrongful acquittals is discussed. Finally, a detailed outline of subsequent chapters is provided.