Beyond the Law's Reach? Powerful Criminals, Foreign Entanglement, and Justice in the Shadow of Violence

Beyond the Law's Reach? argues that fundamental assumptions in contemporary political philosophy need to be rethought in the face of pervasive political violence. At an applied level, Nili develops this claim by delving into a series of specific controversies, all revolving around affluent democracies' policy responses to the threat of pervasive violence abroad. Examples include the ethics of giving refuge to beleaguered autocrats to avert civil war in their country, the ethics of prosecuting foreign officials who have colluded with drug cartels, and the admission of oligarchs who acquired their riches by distorting their country's rule of law.

At a more theoretical level, the book shows that the moral principles needed to adjudicate these particular controversies can illuminate broader issues in normative political theory. These range from the philosophy of criminal punishment, through the relationship between the law's letter and its spirit, to the general plausibility of certain moral theories (and meta-theories) as public policy guides. Ranging from influential theories of justice to some of the hardest moral dilemmas facing communities and leaders struggling with the shadow of violence, this book explores the difficult circumstances in which we must aside not just the assumption of a stable liberal democracy, but even the dream of a clear path towards such democracy.

Shmuel Nili, Associate Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University

Shmuel Nili is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. Nili's work focuses on links between domestic and global injustice, particularly as these relate to corporate agency, corruption, and abuse of power. He has published widely on these themes in multiple leading journals. The same themes also dominate Nili's first three books: The People's Duty (Cambridge University Press, 2019); Integrity: Personal and Political (Oxford University Press, 2020); and Philosophizing the indefensible (Oxford University Press, 2023).