Browse Results

Select your format based upon: 1) how you want to read your book, and 2) compatibility with your reading tool. To learn more about using Bookshare with your device, visit the Help Center.

Here is an overview of the specialized formats that Bookshare offers its members with links that go to the Help Center for more information.

• Bookshare Web Reader - A customized reading tool for Bookshare members offering all the features of DAISY with a single click of the "Read Now" link.
• DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) - A digital book file format. DAISY books from Bookshare are DAISY 3.0 text files that work with just about every type of access technology that reads text. Books that contain images will have the download option of ‘DAISY Text with Images’.
• BRF (Braille Refreshable Format) - Digital Braille for use with refreshable Braille devices and Braille embossers.
• MP3 (MPEG audio layer 3) - Provides audio only with no text. These books are created with a text-to-speech engine and spoken by Kendra, a high quality synthetic voice from Ivona. Any device that supports MP3 playback is compatible.
• DAISY Audio - Similar to the DAISY option above; however, this option uses MP3 files created with our text-to-speech engine that utilizes Ivonas Kendra voice. This format will work with Daisy Audio compatible players such as Victor Reader Stream and Read2Go.
• EPUB - A standard e-book format that can be read on many tools, such as iBooks, Readium or others.
• Word - Accessible Word output, which can be unzipped and opened in any tool that allows .docx files

Justice, Luck & Responsibility in Health Care: Philosophical Background and Ethical Implications for End-of-Life Care (Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy #30)

In this book, an international group of philosophers, economists and theologians focus on the relationship between justice, luck and responsibility in health care. Together, they offer a thorough reflection on questions such as: How should we understand justice in health care? Why are health care interests so important that they deserve special protection? How should we value health? What are its functions and do these make it different from other goods? Furthermore, how much equality should there be? Which inequalities in health and health care are unfair and which are simply unfortunate? Which matters of health care belong to the domain of justice, and which to the domain of charity? And to what extent should we allow personal responsibility to play a role in allocating health care services and resources, or in distributing the costs? With this book, the editors meet a double objective. First, they provide a comprehensive philosophical framework for understanding the concepts of justice, luck and responsibility in contemporary health care; and secondly, they explore whether these concepts have practical force to guide normative discussions in specific contexts of health care such as prevention of infectious diseases or in matters of reproductive technology. Particular and extensive attention is paid to issues regarding end-of-life care.

Justice Matters

Social justice has become a buzzword to suggest we are serious about racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and ableism. But justice remains elusive and contested. It is written in founding documents, street soldiers declare it: 'no justice, no peace!', but is absent from public interactions. Building on Cornel West's notion of 'race matters' and the Black Lives Matter movement, Justice Matters strips away the rhetoric that keeps us from understanding what justice is, particularly in education, but also in relation to health, race, economy, and environment.Ladson-Billings interrogates the meaning of justice, looking at Western notions of justice from Aristotle to Kant to Rorty, alongside Eastern notions of Justice, from Lao Tzu, to Rumi to Frantz Fanon and W.E.B. Dubois. She shows how the pandemic has exposed deep injustices in society, and how schooling and the curriculum are largely blind to the race, White supremacy, and the racial trauma that plagues marginalized people. She argues that teaching strategies that rely on hierarchy, such as ability groups, tell students who they are and what we expect of them, supposedly doing a 'just' thing but also suggesting that some people are 'less' than others - the very narrative of White supremacy. Schooling is the genesis of exclusion and incarceration, with strategies like classroom exclusion, suspension, and expulsion laying the groundwork for the school to prison pipeline. Offering hope for a way forward, she looks at how hip hop can champion justice, and considers justice in the context of social movements, including Black Lives Matter, MoveOn.org, and #MeToo, and explores the pros and cons of 'hashtag activism'. Ultimately she shows us how justice can and should be the central tenet of education and society, and how we can save it from being obscured and watered down.

Justice Matters

Social justice has become a buzzword to suggest we are serious about racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, and ableism. But justice remains elusive and contested. It is written in founding documents, street soldiers declare it: 'no justice, no peace!', but is absent from public interactions. Building on Cornel West's notion of 'race matters' and the Black Lives Matter movement, Justice Matters strips away the rhetoric that keeps us from understanding what justice is, particularly in education, but also in relation to health, race, economy, and environment.Ladson-Billings interrogates the meaning of justice, looking at Western notions of justice from Aristotle to Kant to Rorty, alongside Eastern notions of Justice, from Lao Tzu, to Rumi to Frantz Fanon and W.E.B. Dubois. She shows how the pandemic has exposed deep injustices in society, and how schooling and the curriculum are largely blind to the race, White supremacy, and the racial trauma that plagues marginalized people. She argues that teaching strategies that rely on hierarchy, such as ability groups, tell students who they are and what we expect of them, supposedly doing a 'just' thing but also suggesting that some people are 'less' than others - the very narrative of White supremacy. Schooling is the genesis of exclusion and incarceration, with strategies like classroom exclusion, suspension, and expulsion laying the groundwork for the school to prison pipeline. Offering hope for a way forward, she looks at how hip hop can champion justice, and considers justice in the context of social movements, including Black Lives Matter, MoveOn.org, and #MeToo, and explores the pros and cons of 'hashtag activism'. Ultimately she shows us how justice can and should be the central tenet of education and society, and how we can save it from being obscured and watered down.

Justice, Migration, and Mercy

Political controversy about migration is becoming more frequent, more heated, and for certain groups, decidedly more urgent. This raises pressing questions not only in the realms of policy-making and public discourse, but also for philosophical accounts of migration. Do liberal states have the right to exclude unwanted outsiders, or should all borders be open? How should we begin to theorize the morality of refugee and asylum policy? If states can exclude unwanted outsiders, what ethical principles govern the determination of who gets in? Justice, Migration, and Mercy offers a way in which these questions might be answered by providing a vision of how we can understand the political morality of migration. Michael Blake offers a novel, and plausible, account of the right to exclude on which that right is grounded on a more fundamental right to avoid unwanted forms of political relationship. Far from simply justifying exclusion, however, Blake examines the best justifications for exclusion in an effort to determine its limits. In doing so, he challenges the current global realities of migration which ensure open borders for a select few and closed borders for the majority, most often the most marginalized in society. His account sheds light on more specific questions of justice in migration, such as the permissibility of travel bans and carrier sanctions. He also offers a particular vision about how to go beyond questions of right and liberal justice, towards a declaration of the sort of community we wish to be. Blake then identifies the moral notion of mercy as a central one for the moral analysis of migration, a move which leads to the conclusion that we ought to show mercy and justice in constructing migration policy as well as in public debate.

Justice, Migration, and Mercy

Political controversy about migration is becoming more frequent, more heated, and for certain groups, decidedly more urgent. This raises pressing questions not only in the realms of policy-making and public discourse, but also for philosophical accounts of migration. Do liberal states have the right to exclude unwanted outsiders, or should all borders be open? How should we begin to theorize the morality of refugee and asylum policy? If states can exclude unwanted outsiders, what ethical principles govern the determination of who gets in? Justice, Migration, and Mercy offers a way in which these questions might be answered by providing a vision of how we can understand the political morality of migration. Michael Blake offers a novel, and plausible, account of the right to exclude on which that right is grounded on a more fundamental right to avoid unwanted forms of political relationship. Far from simply justifying exclusion, however, Blake examines the best justifications for exclusion in an effort to determine its limits. In doing so, he challenges the current global realities of migration which ensure open borders for a select few and closed borders for the majority, most often the most marginalized in society. His account sheds light on more specific questions of justice in migration, such as the permissibility of travel bans and carrier sanctions. He also offers a particular vision about how to go beyond questions of right and liberal justice, towards a declaration of the sort of community we wish to be. Blake then identifies the moral notion of mercy as a central one for the moral analysis of migration, a move which leads to the conclusion that we ought to show mercy and justice in constructing migration policy as well as in public debate.

Justice, Morality and Education: A New Focus in Ethics in Education

The Justice Motive in Social Behavior: Adapting to Times of Scarcity and Change (Critical Issues in Social Justice)

This volume was conceived out of the concern with what the imminent future holds for the "have" countries ... those societies, such as the United States, which are based on complex technology and a high level of energy consumption. Even the most sanguine projection includes as base minimum relatively rapid and radical change in all aspects of the society, reflecting adaptation or reactions to demands created by poten­ tial threat to the technological base, sources of energy, to the life-support system itself. Whatever the source of these threats-whether they are the result of politically endogeneous or exogeneous forces-they will elicit changes in our social institutions; changes resulting not only from attempts to adapt but also from unintended consequences of failures to adapt. One reasonable assumption is that whatever the future holds for us, we would prefer to live in a world of minimal suffering with the greatest opportunity for fulfilling the human potential. The question then becomes one of how we can provide for these goals in that scenario for the imminent future ... a world of threat, change, need to adapt, diminishing access to that which has been familiar, comfortable, needed.

Justice of Marxism: Debate, Dialogue and Defense

This book analyzes Marxian theories of justice within the context of contemporary political philosophy and intellectual history. Transcending perspectives from classical Marxism, the author analyzes how Western Marxism has engaged with critically and responded to the theories of justice, especially since the 1970s. The nine chapters cover major intellectual movements and multi-dimensional frameworks of thought that critique and understand anew the idea of justice, including anglophone debates on Marxism and justice, global distributive justice, and viewpoints from analytical Marxism, radical egalitarianism, the Frankfurt School, Marxian feminism and ecological Marxism. The second part of the book returns to the classical texts of Marxism, with a focus on historical materialism and a critique of capitalism to reinterpret basic tenets of justice in Marxism and to reconstruct Marxian theory of justice. This title will be of value to scholars and students interested in theories of justice, Marxian philosophy and political philosophy.

Justice of Marxism: Debate, Dialogue and Defense

This book analyzes Marxian theories of justice within the context of contemporary political philosophy and intellectual history. Transcending perspectives from classical Marxism, the author analyzes how Western Marxism has engaged with critically and responded to the theories of justice, especially since the 1970s. The nine chapters cover major intellectual movements and multi-dimensional frameworks of thought that critique and understand anew the idea of justice, including anglophone debates on Marxism and justice, global distributive justice, and viewpoints from analytical Marxism, radical egalitarianism, the Frankfurt School, Marxian feminism and ecological Marxism. The second part of the book returns to the classical texts of Marxism, with a focus on historical materialism and a critique of capitalism to reinterpret basic tenets of justice in Marxism and to reconstruct Marxian theory of justice. This title will be of value to scholars and students interested in theories of justice, Marxian philosophy and political philosophy.

The Justice of Mercy (Law, Meaning, And Violence)

"The Justice of Mercy is exhilarating reading. Teeming with intelligence and insight, this study immediately establishes itself as the unequaled philosophical and legal exploration of mercy. But Linda Meyer's book reaches beyond mercy to offer reconceptualizations of justice and punishment themselves. Meyer's ambition is to rethink the failed retributivist paradigm of criminal justice and to replace it with an ideal of merciful punishment grounded in a Heideggerian insight into the gift of being-with-others. The readings of criminal law, Heideggerian and Levinasian philosophy, and literature are powerful and provocative. The Justice of Mercy is a radical and rigorous exploration of both punishment and mercy as profoundly human activities." ---Roger Berkowitz, Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Ethical and Political Thinking, Bard College "This book addresses a question both ancient and urgently timely: how to reconcile the law's call to justice with the heart's call to mercy? Linda Ross Meyer's answer is both philosophical and pragmatic, taking us from the conceptual roots of the supposed conflict between justice and mercy to concrete examples in both fiction and contemporary criminal law. Energetic, eloquent, and moving, this book's defense of mercy will resonate with philosophers, legal scholars, lawyers, and policymakers engaged with criminal justice, and anyone concerned about our current harshly punitive legal system." ---Carol Steiker, Harvard Law School "Far from being a utopian, soft and ineffectual concept, Meyer shows that mercy already operates within the law in ways that we usually do not recognize. . . . Meyer's piercing insights and careful analysis bring the reader to think of law, justice, and mercy itself in a new and far more profound light." ---James Martel, San Francisco State University How can granting mercy be just if it gives a criminal less punishment than he "deserves" and treats his case differently from others like it? This ancient question has become central to debates over truth and reconciliation commissions, alternative dispute resolution, and other new forms of restorative justice. The traditional response has been to marginalize mercy and to cast doubt on its ability to coexist with forms of legal justice. Flipping the relationship between justice and mercy, Linda Ross Meyer argues that our rule-bound and harsh system of punishment is deeply flawed and that mercy should be, not the crazy woman in the attic of the law, but the lady of the house. This book articulates a theory of punishment with mercy and illustrates the implications of that theory with legal examples drawn from criminal law doctrine, pardons, mercy in military justice, and fictional narratives of punishment and mercy. Linda Ross Meyer is Carmen Tortora Professor of Law at Quinnipiac University School of Law; President of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities; and Associate Editor of Journal of Law, Culture and the Humanities. Jacket illustration: "Lotus" by Anthony James

Justice, Responsibility and Reconciliation in the Wake of Conflict (Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life #1)

What are the moral obligations of participants and bystanders during—and in the wake of –a conflict? How have theoretical understandings of justice, peace and responsibility changed in the face of contemporary realities of war? Drawing on the work of leading scholars in the fields of philosophy, political theory, international law, religious studies and peace studies, the collection significantly advances current literature on war, justice and post-conflict reconciliation. Contributors address some of the most pressing issues of international and civil conflict, including the tension between attributing individual and collective responsibility for the wrongs of war, the trade-offs made between the search for truth and demands for justice, and the conceptual intricacies of coming to understand just what is meant by ‘peace’ and ‘conflict.’ Individual essays also address concrete topics including the international criminal court, reparations, truces, political apologies, truth commissions and criminal trials, with an eye to contemporary examples from conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and North and South America.​

Justice, Rights, and Tort Law

The essays in this volume are the result of a project on Values in Tort Law directed by the Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values. We are indebted to the Board of Westminster Col­ lege for its financial support. The project involved two meetings of a mixed group of lawyers and philosophers to discuss drafts of papers and general issues in tort law. Beyond the principal researchers, whose papers appear here, we are grateful to John Bargo, Dick Bronaugh, Craig Brown, Earl Cherniak, Bruce Feldthusen, Barry Hoffmaster and Steve Sharzer for their helpful discussion, and to Nancy Margolis for copy editing. All of these papers except one have appeared before in the journal Law and Philosophy (Vol. 1 No.3, December 1982 and Vol. 2 No.1, Apri11983). Chapman's paper which was previously published in The University of Western Ontario Law Review (Vol. 20 No.1, 1982) appears here with permission. Westminster Institute for Ethics and Human Values, M.D.B. Westminster College, London, Canada B.C. vii INTRODUCTION The law of torts is society's primary mechanism for resolving disputes arising from personal injury and property damage.

Justice, the State and International Relations

Justice, the State and International Relations offers a review of historical traditions of international ethical and political theory in the light of modern developments in political philosophy. McCarthy provides a defence of natural law tradition, and, in response to the criticism of natural law that, along with Kantianism, it is too abstract to produce a substantive account of justice and rights, constructs an argument for basic, agency-grounded rights. Through his study, the author attacks `realism' and the modern `cosmopolitan' theories that until now have been too little debated.

Justice to Future Generations and the Environment (Law and Philosophy Library #40)

The analysis of justice between generations proposed in this book is based first of all on a critical reading of Rawls' theory of justice, but it also pays attention to the existential and cultural context of our intuitions about intergenerational equity. Although the desire for justice supplies an independent reason for action, the unprecedented character of the context in which that reason must operate necessarily raises the question of its psychological support: we want justice for future people, but what interest do we have in their welfare in the first place? I have tried to capture this double orientation by making use of Thomas Nagel's conceptual dichotomy between the objective, detached point of view, and the subjective (in our case: the cuturally and historically situated) perspective. There is, on the one hand, a desire for justice that tends towards the definition of transhistorical standards, detached from the particular values ofthe time and place; there is, on the other hand, a motivational background that is tied to our present position in history, and nourished by the values we presently believe in. I have attempted to bridge the gap between the one and the other dimension by different conceptual avenues, the principal one being a time-related interpretation of Rawls' concept of equal liberty: justice wants us to maintain the worth of liberty over time by perpetuating the conditions of its meaningful exercise.

Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology (Philosophical Studies Series #17)

With one exception, all of the papers in this volume were originally presented at a conference held in April, 1978, at The Ohio State University. The excep­ tion is the paper by Wilfrid Sellars, which is a revised version of a paper he originally published in the Journal of Philosophy, 1973. However, the present version of Sellars' paper is so thoroughly changed from its original, that it is now virtually a new paper. None of the other nine papers has been published previously. The bibliography, prepared by Nancy Kelsik, is very extensive and it is tempting to think that it is complete. But I believe that virtual com­ pleteness is more likely to prove correct. The conference was made possible by grants from the College of Human­ ities and the Graduate School, Ohio State University, as well as by a grant from the Philosophy Department. On behalf of the contributors, I want to thank these institutions for their support. I also want to thank Marshall Swain and Robert Turnbu~l for early help and encouragement; Bette Hellinger for assistance in setting up the confer­ ence; and Mary Raines and Virginia Foster for considerable aid in the pre­ paration of papers and many other conference matters. The friendly advice of the late James Cornman was also importantly helpful. April,1979 GEORGE S. PAPPAS ix INTRODUCTION The papers in this volume deal in different ways with the related issues of epistemic justification or warrant, and the analysis of factual knowledge.

Justification as Ignorance: An Essay in Epistemology

Justification as Ignorance offers an original account of epistemic justification as both non-factive and luminous, vindicating core internalist intuitions without construing justification as an internal condition knowable by reflection alone. Sven Rosenkranz conceives of justification, in its doxastic and propositional varieties, as a kind of epistemic possibility of knowing and of being in a position to know. His account contrasts with recent alternative views that characterize justification in terms of the metaphysical possibility of knowing. Instead, he develops a suitable non-normal multi-modal epistemic logic for knowledge and being in a position to know that respects the finding that these notions create hyperintensional contexts. He also defends his conception of justification against well-known anti-luminosity arguments, shows that the account allows for fruitful applications and principled solutions to the lottery and preface paradoxes, and provides a metaphysics of justification and its varying degrees of strength that is compatible with core assumptions of the knowledge-first approach and disjunctivist conceptions of mental states.

Justification as Ignorance: An Essay in Epistemology

Justification as Ignorance offers an original account of epistemic justification as both non-factive and luminous, vindicating core internalist intuitions without construing justification as an internal condition knowable by reflection alone. Sven Rosenkranz conceives of justification, in its doxastic and propositional varieties, as a kind of epistemic possibility of knowing and of being in a position to know. His account contrasts with recent alternative views that characterize justification in terms of the metaphysical possibility of knowing. Instead, he develops a suitable non-normal multi-modal epistemic logic for knowledge and being in a position to know that respects the finding that these notions create hyperintensional contexts. He also defends his conception of justification against well-known anti-luminosity arguments, shows that the account allows for fruitful applications and principled solutions to the lottery and preface paradoxes, and provides a metaphysics of justification and its varying degrees of strength that is compatible with core assumptions of the knowledge-first approach and disjunctivist conceptions of mental states.

Justification in Earlier Medieval Theology

One of the pleasures and privileges of scholarship is the opportunity to express one's gratitude to friends and colleagues upon the occasion of a publication. As with many scholarly first books, this present work had its genesis as a doctoral dissertation, and hence my first and most profound acknowledgment must be to Professor S. Harrison Thomson of the University of Colorado, whom I am honored to be able to describe as my mentor. Only my fellow "Old Thomsonians" can appreciate the common debt we owe to this great medievalist who was also a magni­ ficent teacher and counsellor. Presently in retirement, he continues to be our principal inspiration and model of scholarly distinction. I am also greatly indebted to another former mentor and now my senior colleague and chairman at the University of Denver, Professor Allen D. Breck, who, together with Deans Edward A. Lindell and Gerhard H. Mundinger, constantly encouraged and assisted my further progress and read the manuscript in its final stages, offering many valuable sugges­ tions as to style and substance. My university provided me with generous support in the form of research funds and clerical services; I am grateful to. those colleagues who made this assistance possible, as well as to friends at other institutions who shared their knowledge and frequently gave salutary advice.

The Justification of Religious Belief (Philosophy Of Religion Ser.)

The Justification of Scientific Change (Synthese Library #36)

In this book I discuss the justification of scientific change and argue that it rests on different sorts of invariance. Against this background I con­ sider notions of observation, meaning, and regulative standards. My position is in opposition to some widely influential and current views. Revolutionary new ideas concerning the philosophy of science have recently been advanced by Feyerabend, Hanson, Kuhn, Toulmin, and others. There are differences among their views and each in some respect differs from the others. It is, however, not the differences, but rather the similarities that are of primary concern to me here. The claim that there are pervasive presuppositions fundamental to scientific in­ vestigations seems to be essential to the views of these men. Each would further hold that transitions from one scientific tradition to another force radical changes in what is observed, in the meanings of the terms employed, and in the metastandards involved. They would claim that total replace­ ment, not reduction, is what does, and should, occur during scientific revolutions. I argue that the proposed arguments for radical observational variance, for radical meaning variance, and for radical variance of regulative standards with respect to scientific transitions all fail. I further argue that these positions are in themselves implausible and methodologically undesirable. I sketch an account of the rationale of scientific change which preserves the merits and avoids the shortcomings of the approach of radical meaning variance theorists.

The Justificatory Force of Experiences: From a Phenomenological Epistemology to the Foundations of Mathematics and Physics (Synthese Library #459)

This book offers a phenomenological conception of experiential justification that seeks to clarify why certain experiences are a source of immediate justification and what role experiences play in gaining (scientific) knowledge. Based on the author's account of experiential justification, this book exemplifies how a phenomenological experience-first epistemology can epistemically ground the individual sciences. More precisely, it delivers a comprehensive picture of how we get from epistemology to the foundations of mathematics and physics.The book is unique as it utilizes methods and insights from the phenomenological tradition in order to make progress in current analytic epistemology. It serves as a starting point for re-evaluating the relevance of Husserlian phenomenology to current analytic epistemology and making an important step towards paving the way for future mutually beneficial discussions. This is achieved by exemplifying how current debates can benefit from ideas, insights, and methods we find in the phenomenological tradition.

Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory (Oxford Political Theory)

Gerald Gaus draws on current work in epistemology and cognitive psychology to defend a modest version of cognitive relativism. Building on this theory of personal justification, he asks, "How do we justify moral and political principles to others?" Here, the "populist" proposal put forward by "political liberals"--that the assent of all reasonable citizens must be obtained--is considered and rejected. Because reasonable people often ignore excellent reasons, moral and political principles can be considered conclusively justified, even in the face of some reasonable dissent. Conclusive justification, however, is difficult to achieve, and Gaus acknowledges that most of our public justifications are inconclusive. He then addresses the question of how citizens can adjudicate their inconclusive public justifications. The rule of law, liberal democracy and limited judicial review are defended as elements of a publicly justified umpiring procedure.

Justifying Intellectual Property

Why should a property interest exist in an intangible item? In recent years, arguments over intellectual property have often divided proponents—who emphasize the importance of providing incentives for producers of creative works— from skeptics who emphasize the need for free and open access to knowledge. In a wide-ranging and ambitious analysis, Robert P. Merges establishes a sophisticated rationale for the most vital form of modern property: IP rights. His insightful new book answers the many critics who contend that these rights are inefficient, unfair, and theoretically incoherent. But Merges’ vigorous defense of IP is also a call for appropriate legal constraints and boundaries: IP rights are real, but they come with real limits. Drawing on Kant, Locke, and Rawls as well as contemporary scholars, Merges crafts an original theory to explain why IP rights make sense as a reward for effort and as a way to encourage individuals to strive. He also provides a novel explanation of why awarding IP rights to creative people is fair for everyone else in society, by contributing to a just distribution of resources. Merges argues convincingly that IP rights are based on a solid ethical foundation, and—when subject to fair limits—these rights are an indispensable part of a well-functioning society.

Justifying New Labour Policy

An original combination of theoretical innovation and a detailed empirical analysis of the ideas, language and policy of New Labour. Politicians often appeal to moral principles and arguments in their efforts to win support for new policy programmes. Yet the question of how politicians use moral language has until now been neglected by scholars.

Justifying Taxes: Some Elements for a General Theory of Democratic Tax Law (Law and Philosophy Library #51)

Justifying Taxes offers readers some of the elements of a democratic tax law, considered within its political and philosophical context in order to determine the extent of legitimate tax obligations. The objective is to revisit some of the issues in the dogmatics of tax law from the viewpoint of a critical citizen, always ready to ask questions about the justification underlying her obligations, and especially about her paramount burden, viz., the payment of certain amounts of money. Within this purview, special attention is paid to the general principles of taxation. The argument is complemented by a detailed reconstruction of constitutional reasoning in tax matters, close attention being paid to the jurisprudence of the Spanish Tribunal Constitucional. Readership: Legal scholars, political scientists and philosophers. Especially recommended to graduate and undergraduate students of Tax Law, Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence, Philosophy of Law and Political Theory.