Samuel Freeman is a leading political philosopher and one of the foremost authorities on the works of John Rawls. Liberalism and Distributive Justice offers a series of Freeman's essays in contemporary political philosophy on three different forms of liberalism-classical liberalism, libertarianism, and the high liberal tradition--and their relation to capitalism, the welfare state, and economic justice.

Samuel Freeman is the Avalon Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1985. He is the author of Justice and the Social Contract (OUP, 2006) and of Rawls (Routledge, 2007). He edited the Cambridge Companion to Rawls (2003), as well as John Rawls's Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (2007) and his Collected Papers (1999).

Abbreviations Introduction Part I: Liberalism, Libertarianism, and Economic Justice 1. Capitalism in the Classical and High Liberal Traditions 2. Illiberal Libertarians: Why Libertarianism is not a Liberal View Part II: Distributive Justice and the Difference Principle 3. Rawls on Distributive Justice and the Difference Principle 4. Property-Owning Democracy and the Difference Principle 5. Private Law and Rawls's Principles of Justice Part III: Liberal Institutions and Distributive Justice 6. The Social and Institutional Bases of Distributive Justice 7. The Basic Structure of Society as The Primary Subject of Justice 8. Ideal Theory and the Justice of Institutions 9. Constructivism, Facts, and Moral Justification References Index