The Latest

Law Politics

The Supreme Court’s Docket Addresses the Washington Gridlock

The framers of the Constitution did not anticipate political parties.

  • Pamela S. Karlan
Class & Inequality

What Adam Smith Can Teach Us About Incentives in Higher Education

His vision of human nature favored neither the brutish realism of Thomas Hobbes nor the wide-eyed optimism of Francis Hutcheson.

  • John Paul Rollert

From the Editors: November/December 2013

  • Deborah Chasman
  • Joshua Cohen
Law Politics

Ayatollah Khamenei and the Destruction of Israel

Including translations of Khamenei’s speeches from 1990 to the present.

  • Akbar Ganji
Law

Why Pakistan Chose Coal: Ethics in an Energy Crisis

 Ethicists, economists, and others have developed a set of useful tools for deciding what to do when economic, environmental, and social values conflict. 

  • Debra Satz
  • Mark Budolfson
  • Blake Francis
  • Hyunseop Kim
Arts in Society

Cop and Robber

It was the canal. He’d broken through, broken it, and let it in. To his mother’s backyard. Run, Tommy! 

  • E.H. Dalton

Sign up for our newsletter

Arts in Society

W.H. Auden and Ecopoetics

“By landscape reminded once of his mother’s figure”

  • Robert Archambeau
Arts in Society

2013 Poetry Contest Winner: Scott Coffel

  • Linda Gregerson
  • Scott Coffel
Law

Drone Victims Testify Before Congress

A Pakistani family demands acknowledgment of their grandmother's death.

  • Beenish Ahmed
Law

The Moral Responsibility of Volunteer Soldiers

Traditional just war theory has it wrong. Soldiers are morally culpable for fighting in unjust wars—and thus deserve the option of selective conscientious objection.

  • Jeff McMahan
with responses from
  • Assaf Sharon
  • Brian Imiola
  • Shannon E. French
  • Seth Lazar
  • Adil Ahmad Haque
  • Lawrence J. Korb
  • Lionel K. McPherson
  • Charles J. Dunlap Jr.
  • Kimberley Brownlee
  • Matt Gallagher
Science

A Case for Climate Engineering

Keith explores a challenging proposal; climate engineering is no silver bullet.

  • David Keith
Politics

Rodolfo Walsh and the Struggle for Argentina

Before In Cold Blood, there was Operation Massacre.

  • Stephen Phelan
Arts in Society

Three Stephanies

  • Stephanie Burt
Arts in Society

A Conversation with Stephen Burt

The ethics of the imagination: after crossing the threshold into a fantasy world, can we safely dispense with social norms?

  • Monica Youn
Law Science

Video: The World After Snowden

Toward Distributed Security in Cyberspace

  • Ronald Deibert
Arts in Society

Microreview: Bin Ramke, Aerial

Stunning, strange, and original verse. 

  • Noah Eli Gordon
Arts in Society

Haven in a Heartless World

Alan Stone reviews Enough Said

  • Alan A. Stone
Politics Science

A Guide to the Affordable Care Act

Who are you in the eyes of the ACA?

  • Deborah Stone
Arts in Society Politics

A Place for Muslim Women

The kinds of sacred spaces we worked for are not just possible; they exist. On the other side of the planet. Under occupation.

  • Haroon Moghul
Arts in Society

Microview: Lisa Russ Spaar, Vanitas, Rough

Poems that refuse to leave the body. 

  • Andy Nicole Bowers
Law Philosophy Politics

The Sound of Terror

The phenomenology of a drone strike.

  • Nasser Hussain
Arts in Society

Autumn Wind

An ancient autumn poem from the Tang Dynasty. 

  • Li Bai
Arts in Society

Do the Right Thing

On Italo Calvino’s letters, 1941–1985.

  • Leland de la Durantaye
Law Politics

Jordan’s Second-Class Citizens

Jordanian mothers with non-Jordanian husbands cannot pass along citizenship to their children. The results are devastating, but a growing campaign is committed to change.

  • Elizabeth Whitman
trending_flat
Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox

A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization

Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Donate

Become a Member

Subscribe