William A. Edmundson
Regents' Professor of Law Emeritus- Education
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
J.D. 1985, with honors; Order of the Coif; Article Editor, Duke Law JournalUniversity of California, Berkeley, California
Ph.D. 1982, in Philosophy. Committee: Bruce Vermazen, Samuel Scheffler, Philip SelznickAntioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio
B.A. 1972, in Philosophy and Religion
- Specializations
Administrative Law
Criminal Law & Procedure
Jurisprudence
- Biography
William A. Edmundson, Emeritus Regents’ Professor of Law and Philosophy, earned his Ph.D in philosophy from the University of California-Berkeley and his J.D., from Duke Law School.
Edmundson has written on animal rights, coercion, the duty to obey the law, distributive justice, political equality, punishment, privacy, and other topics in the areas of moral and political philosophy and the philosophy of law.
Edmundson is the author of John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (2017); An Introduction to Rights (2d ed. 2012; Portuguese ed., 2006); and Three Anarchical Fallacies (1998). He edited The Duty to Obey the Law (1999) and co-edited The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (2004).
Articles by Edmundson have appeared in Ethics, the Journal of Political Philosophy, Legal Theory, the Journal of Moral Philosophy, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Law and Philosophy, the Michigan Law Review, the Iowa Law Review and elsewhere.
- Publications
Books
William A. Edmundson, Socialism for Soloists (2021).
William A. Edmundson, John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (2017).
William A. Edmundson, An Introduction to Rights (2d ed., Cambridge University Press 2012).
William A. Edmundson, An Introduction to Rights (Cambridge University Press 2004) (Portuguese trans., Uma Introdução aos Direitos (E. Ferreira E Silva & N. Eichemburg, trans., Martins Fontes, 2006).
William A. Edmundson, Three Anarchical Fallacies: An Essay on Political Authority (Cambridge University Press 1998, paperback ed. 2007).
Book Chapters
William A. Edmundson, Lincoln as a Political Philosopher, 9 Oxford Stud. Pol. Phil. 260 (2023).
William A. Edmundson, Moral Education and the Ethics of Consent, in The Routledge Handbook of the Ethics of Consent 372 (Peter Schaber & Andreas Muller eds., Routledge, 2018).
William A. Edmundson, Ought We To Do What We Ought To Be Made To Do? Cohen and Nagel on the Personal and the Political, in Reasons and Intentions in Law and Practical Agency 176 (George Pavlakos & Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco, eds. 2015).
William A. Edmundson, A Right to Do Wrong? Two Conceptions of Moral Rights, in Rights: Concepts and Contexts (Brian H. Bix & Horacio Spector eds., Ashgate, 2012).
William A. Edmundson, Coercion, in The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law (2012).
William A. Edmundson, Pluralism, Intransitivity, Incoherence, in Theoretical Foundations of Law and Economics (Mark White ed., Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009).
William A. Edmundson, Adding Reasons Up, in Economics and the Mind (Barbara Montero and Mark D. White eds., Routledge, 2007).
William A. Edmundson, Introduction, in The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (William Edmundson & Martin P. Golding eds., Blackwell, 2005).
William A. Edmundson, Privacy, in The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (William Edmundson & Martin P. Golding eds., Blackwell, 2005).
William A. Edmundson, Introduction, in The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings (William A. Edmundson ed., Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999).
Articles
William A. Edmundson, "In Such Ways as Promise Some Success", 28 Harv. Rev. Phil. 1 (2021).
William A. Edmundson, What Are "The Means of Production"?, 28 J. Pol. Phil. 421 (2020).
nan
William Edmundson, Tolerating the Conditionally Tolerant: The Uneasy Case of Salvation Religions, 7 Democratic Theory 86 (2020).
William A. Edmundson, What is the Argument for the Fair Value of Political Liberty?, 46 Soc. Theory & Prac. 497 (2020).
William A. Edmundson, The Choice of a Social System: Reflections on a "Property-Owning Democracy and the Difference Principle", 10 Phil. & Pub. Issues 23 (2020).
William A. Edmundson, The Property Question, 34(1) Pub. Aff. Q. 1 (2020).
William Edmundson, Replies to Commentators, 26 Ethical Persp. 371 (2019).
William Edmundson, Précis of John Rawls: Reticent Socialist, 26 Ethical Persp. 323 (2019).
William A. Edmundson, Neoliberalism Versus Distributional Autonomy: The Skipped Step in Rawls's The Law of Peoples, 49 Canadian J. Phil. 169 (2019).
William A. Edmundson, Distributive Justice and Distributed Obligations, 15 J. Moral Phil. 1 (2018).
William A. Edmundson, Precedent and United States Administrative Law, 27 Studia Iuridica Lublinensia 69 (2018).
William A. Edmundson, Coercion, Stability, and Indoctrination in the Pejorative Sense, 7 Jurisprudence 540 (2016).
William A. Edmundson, Do Animals Need Rights?, 23 J. Pol. Phil. 345 (2015).
William Edmundson, Book Review, 34 Law & Philosophy 229 (2015) (reviewing James Bernard Murphy, The Philosophy of Customary Law (2014)).
William A. Edmundson, Do Animals Need Citizenship?, 13 Int'l J. Const. L. 749 (2015).
William A. Edmundson, Law's Evolution and Law as Custom, 51 San Diego L. Rev. 875 (2014).
William A. Edmundson, Is Justice Verdictive? (May 12, 2014). Georgia State University College of Law, Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2014-20.
William A. Edmundson, Politics in a State of Nature, 26 Ratio Juris 149 (2013).
William A. Edmundson, Why Legal Theory is Political Philosophy, 19 Legal Theory 331 (2013).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 31 Law and Philosophy 759 (2012) (reviewing Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs (2011)).
William A. Edmundson, Shmegality, 2 Jurisprudence 273 (2011).
William A. Edmundson, Consent & Its Cousins, 121 Ethics 335 (2011).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 120 Ethics 869 (2010) (reviewing Arthur Ripstein, Force & Freedom: Kant's Legal & Political Philosophy (2010)).
William A. Edmundson, Political Authority, Moral Powers and the Intrinsic Value of Obedience, 30 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 179 (2010).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 28 Law & Phil. 101 (2009) (reviewing Christopher Wellman & A. John Simmons, The Duty to Obey the Law: For or Against? (2005).
William A. Edmundson, Schauer on Precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court, 24 Ga. St. U. L. Rev. 403 (2007).
William A. Edmundson, The Virtue of Law-Abidance, Philosophers Imprint, Dec. 2006, at 1.
William A. Edmundson, First Force, J. Ethics & Soc. Phil., Nov. 2005, at 1.
William A. Edmundson, Comments on Richard Arneson's “Joel Feinberg and the Justification of Hard Paternalism”, 11 Legal Theory 285 (2005).
William Edmundson, State of the Art: The Duty to Obey the Law, 10 Legal Theory 215 (2004) , reprinted in Lloyd's Introduction to Jurisprudence (Michael Freeman, ed., Sweet & Maxwell 2009).
William Edmundson, Locke and Load, 22 Law & Phil. 195 (2003) (review of A. John Simmons, Justification and Legitimacy).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 22 Law & Phil. 195 (2003) (reviewing A. John Simmons, Justification and Legitimacy: Essays on Rights and Obligations (2000)).
William A. Edmundson, Contextualist Answers to Skepticism, and What a Lawyer Cannot Know, 30 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 1 (2002-2003).
William Edmundson, Afterword: Proportionality and the Difference Death Makes, 21 Crim. Just. Ethics 40 (2002).
William A. Edmundson, Social Meaning, Compliance Conditions, and Law’s Claim to Authority, 15 Can. J. L. & Jurisprudence 51 (2002).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 23 Philosophical Inquiry 123 (2002) (reviewing Objectivity in Law and Morals (Brian Leiter, ed. 2001)).
William A. Edmundson, Civility as Political Constraint, 8 Res Publica 217 (2002).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 111 Ethics 644 (2001) (reviewing Arthur Ripstein, Equality, Responsibility, and the Law (1998)).
William A. Edmundson, Introduction: Some Recent Work on Political Obligation, APA Newsl. on Phil. & L., Fall 1999, at 62.
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, Philosophy in Review, 19 Comptes Rendus Philosophiques 327 (1999) (reviewing Philosophy and the Criminal Law: Principle and Critique (Antony Duff, ed. 1998)).
William Edmundson, Abstract, John Rawls' the Idea of Public Reason, APA Newsl. on L. & Phil., Spring 1998, at 108.
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, Philosophy in Review, 18 Comptes Rendus Philosophiques 182 (1998) (reviewing Jaap C. Hage, Reasoning with Rules: An Essay on Legal Reasoning and Its Underlying Logic (1997)).
William A. Edmundson, Legitimate Authority Without Political Obligation, 17 Law & Phil. 43 (1998).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 107 Ethics 556 (1997) (reviewing Legal Rights: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (Austin Sarat & Thomas R. Kearns, eds. 1996)).
William A. Edmundson, The Antinomy of Coherence and Determinacy, 82 Iowa L. Rev. 1 (1996).
William A. Edmundson, Is Law Coercive?, 1 Legal Theory 81 (1995).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 104 Ethics 394 (1994) (reviewing Stephen Guest, Ronald Dworkin (1991)).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 7 Phil. Psychol. 135 (1994) (reviewing Kevin Ashley, Modeling Legal Argument (1990)).
William A. Edmundson, Transparency and Indeterminacy in the Liberal Critique of Critical Legal Studies, 24 Seton Hall L. Rev. 557 (1993).
William A. Edmundson, Love & Power: The Role of Religion & Morality in American Politics, 103 Ethics 627 (1993).
William A. Edmundson, Rethinking Exclusionary Reasons: A Second Edition of Joseph Raz’s Practical Reason and Norms, 12 Law & Phil. 329 (1993).
William A. Edmundson, Moral Foundations of Constitutional Thought: Current Problems, Augustinian Prospects, 102 Ethics 887 (1992).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 102 Ethics 193 (1991) (reviewing Law, Culture, & Values: Essays in Honor of Gray L. Dorsey (Sava Alexander Vojcanin, ed. 1990)).
William A. Edmundson, Liberalism, Legal Decisionmaking, and Morality "As Such", 10 Oxford J. Legal Stud. 505 (1990).
William A. Edmundson, Book Lawyers’ Justice, 88 Mich. L. Rev. 1833 (1990) (reviewing David Luban, Lawyers and Justice (1988) & Philip Heymann & Lance Liebman, the Social Responsibilities of Lawyers (1988)).
William A. Edmundson, The ‘Race-Of-The-Victim’ Effect in Capital Sentencing: McClesky v. Kemp and Underadjustment Bias, 31 Jurimetrics J. 125 (1990).
William A. Edmundson, Are Law and Morality Distinct?, 4 BYU J. Pub. L. 33 (1990).
William A. Edmundson, Note, Discovery of Federal Income Tax Returns and the New “Qualified” Privileges, 1984 Duke L.J. 938 (1984) reprinted in 16 Monthly Dig. Tax Articles 16 (1985).
William A. Edmundson, Book Review, 1984 Duke L.J. 624 (1984) (reviewing Raoul Berger, Death Penalties: The Supreme Court's Obstacle Course (1982)).
William A. Edmundson, Moral Relativism and the Basis of Obligation, Dissertation, University of California Berkley (1982).
Popular Press
William A. Edmundson, Letter to the Editor, William Godwin, Times Literary Suppl., Jan. 13, 2006, at 15.
William A. Edmundson, Letter to the Editor, "She", Times Literary Suppl., Aug. 22, 2003, at 13.
William A. Edmundson, Speeding: A Sprawling Offense?, Fulton County Daily Rep., October 25, 2002, at 7.
William A. Edmundson, Letter to the Editors, Clinton & the Jones Case, N.Y. Rev. Books, April 23, 1998, at 65.
William A. Edmundson, Letter to Word Court, Atlantic Monthly, January 1996, at 116.
William A. Edmundson, Letter to the Editor, British Privacy Debate Swayed U.S. Decisions, N.Y. Times, Sept. 3, 1992, at A14.
Unpublished Papers
Other
The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, (William A. Edmundson & Martin P. Golding eds., Blackwell, 2005).
The Duty to Obey the Law: Selected Philosophical Readings, (William A. Edmundson ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).