Mark G. Kelman is Vice Dean and the James C. Gaither Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. He is the author of many books, including What is in a Name?: Taxation and Regulation across Constitutional Domains, The Heuristics Debate, and A Guide to Critical Legal Studies. Previously, Kelman served as Director of Criminal Justice Projects at the Fund for the City of New York.
Description
"What injuries matter - morally, legally? How do we measure their costs? Which demand redress? Understanding Harm provides a theoretically sophisticated and practically grounded response to these questions. For those who care deeply about social justice, Kelman's brilliant and nuanced book about what injuries matter, why and how much is essential reading" - Kimberly A. Yuracko, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law "Offers a masterful, interdisciplinary analysis and critique of our understanding of both injury and human flourishing sounding both at a theoretical level and, concretely, through a detailed, original examination of our conceptions of poverty, disability, discrimination, harassment, gender relations and sexuality, religious accommodation, and identity politics. Kelman offers fresh, rich, nuanced, and sometimes provocative takes on classical, foundational issues about human flourishing and on how the interdependence of subjective and objective components of human welfare bear on contemporary problems in a pluralist society. Rather than minimizing complexity for the solace that reductionism may offer, Kelman's book is an exemplar of rigorous, unflinchingly honest scholarship about difficult questions that interweaves contributions from philosophy, political theory, legal theory, feminist theory, queer theory, disability theory, empirical psychology, economics, and sociology. It should be required reading to advance the thought of philosophers, political theorists, lawyers, welfare economists, social scientists, and others seeking a deeper understanding of these pivotal matters." - Seana Shiffrin, author of Speech Matters: On Lying, Morality, and the Law "Mark Kelman at his considerable best: wicked smart, tons of fun, impious about platitudes. Unraveling the knottiest dilemmas, Kelman brings to bear wide and deep learning in law, social science, ethics, and political theory. Grappling with this astonishingly rich book won't just change your mind on stuff you thought you understood. It will make you a better thinker." - Don Herzog, University of Michigan Law School