In the Shadow of Justice

A history of how political philosophy was recast by the rise of postwar liberalism and irrevocably changed by John Rawls's A Theory of Justice

In the Shadow of Justice tells the story of how liberal political philosophy was transformed in the second half of the twentieth century under the influence of John Rawls. In this first-ever history of contemporary liberal theory, Katrina Forrester shows how liberal egalitarianisma set of ideas about justice, equality, obligation, and the statebecame dominant, and traces its emergence from the political and ideological context of the postwar United States and Britain.

In the aftermath of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, Rawls's A Theory of Justice made a particular kind of liberalism essential to liberal philosophy. Using archival sources, Forrester explores this liberalism's ascent and legacy by examining its origins in midcentury debates among American...