This book consists of two parts: the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," first published in 1997, and "The Law of Peoples," a major reworking of a much shorter article by the same name published in 1993."The Idea of Public Reason Revisited" is John Rawls's most detailed account of how a modern constitutional democracy, based on a liberal political conception,could and would be viewed as legitimate by reasonable citizens who on religious, philosophical, or moral grounds do not themselves accept a liberal comprehen-sive doctrine. "The Law of Peoples" extends the idea of a social contract to the Society of Peoples and lays out the general principles that can and should be accepted by both liberal and non-liberal societies as the standard for regulating their behavior toward one another…

THE LAW OF PEOPLES

Introduction

PART I The First Part of Ideal Theory

  1 The Law of Peoples as Realistic Utopia

  2 Why Peoples and Not States?

  3 Two Original Positions

  4 The Principles of the Law of Peoples

  5 Democratic Peace and Its Stability

  6 Society of Liberal Peoples: Its Public Reason

PARr II The Second Part of Ideal Theory

  7 Toleration of Nonliberal Peoples

  8 Extension to Decent Hierarchical Peoples

  9 Decent Consultation Hierarchy

  10 Human Rights

  11 Comments on Procedure of the Law of Peoples

  12 Concluding Observations

PART III Nonideal Theory

  13 Just War Doctrine: The Right to War

  14 Just War Doctrine: Conduct of War

  15 Burdened Societies

  16 On Distributive Justice among Peoples

PART IV Conclusion

17 Public Reason and the Law of Peoples

18 Reconciliation to Our Social World

THE IDEA OF PUBLIC REASON

REVISITED

  1 The Idea of Public Reason

  2 The Content of Public Reason

  3 Religion and Public Reason in Democracy

  4 The Wide View of Public Political Culture

  5 On the Family as Part of the Basic Structure

  6 Questions about Public Reason

  7 Conclusion

Index