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Do you have a duty to vote? Should immigrants be allowed to vote? Should we make voting mandatory? How (if at all) should we regulate campaign finance? Should we even have elections at all? In this course, we will explore these and other ethical questions related to electoral participation and the design of electoral institutions. We will evaluate arguments from political philosophers, political scientists, and politicians to better understand how electoral systems promote important democratic values and how this affects citizens' and political leaders' ethical obligations. We will focus, in particular, on issues in electoral design that have been relevant in recent US elections (e.g. gerrymandering), though many of the ethical issues we will discuss in this course will be relevant in any electoral democracy.

Ethical and political questions in public service work, including volunteering, service learning, humanitarian assistance, and public service professions such as medicine and teaching. Motives and outcomes in service work. Connections between service work and justice. Is mandatory service an oxymoron? History of public service in the U.S. Issues in crosscultural service work. Integration with the Haas Center for Public Service to connect service activities and public service aspirations with academic experiences at Stanford.

This course examines ethical and political questions that arise in doing public service work, whether volunteering, service learning, humanitarian endeavors overseas, or public service professions such as medicine and teaching. What motives do people have to engage in public service work? Are self-interested motives troublesome? What is the connection between service work and justice? Should the government or schools require citizens or students to perform service work? Is mandatory service an oxymoron?

How should human beings relate to the natural world? Do we have moral obligations toward non-human animals and other parts of nature? And what do we owe to other human beings, including future generations, with respect to the environment? The first part of this course will examine such questions in light of some of our current ethical theories: considering what those theories suggest regarding the extent and nature of our environmental obligations; and also whether reflection on such obligations can prove informative about the adequacy of our ethical theories. In the second part of the course, we will use the tools that we have acquired to tackle various ethical questions that confront us in our dealings with the natural world, looking at subjects such as: animal rights; conservation; economic approaches to the environment; access to and control over natural resources; environmental justice and pollution; climate change; technology and the environment; and environmental activism.

Conflict is a natural part of human life. As human beings we represent a rich diversity of conflicting personalities, preferences, experiences, needs, and moral viewpoints. How are we to resolve or otherwise address these conflicts in a way fair to all parties? In this course, we will consider the question as it arises across various domains of human life, beginning with the classroom. What are we to do when a set of ideas expressed in the classroom offends, threatens, or silences certain of its members? What is it for a classroom to be safe? What is it for a classroom to be just? We will then move from the classroom to the family, considering a difficult set of questions about how we are to square the autonomy rights of children, elderly parents, and the mentally ill with our desire as family members to keep them safe. Finally, we will turn to the conflicts of citizenship in a liberal democratic society in which the burdens and benefits of citizenship have not always been fairly distributed. We will consider, among others, the question of whether or not civil disobedience is ever morally permissible, of whether there is a right to healthcare, and of whether or not some citizens are owed reparations for past injustices.

This class begins from the core definition of citizenship as membership in a political community and explores the many debates about what that membership means. Who is (or ought to be) a citizen? Who gets to decide? What responsibilities come with citizenship? Is being a citizen analogous to being a friend, a family member, a business partner? How can citizenship be gained, and can it ever be lost? These debates figure in the earliest recorded political philosophy but also animate contemporary political debates. This class uses ancient, medieval, and modern texts to examine these questions and different answers given over time. We¿Äôll pay particular attention to understandings of democratic citizenship but look at non-democratic citizenship as well. Students will develop and defend their own views on these questions, using the class texts as foundations. No experience with political philosophy is required or expected, and students can expect to learn or hone the skills (writing / reading / analysis) of political philosophy.

We usually think about democratic citizenship in terms of rights and opportunities, but are these benefits of democracy accompanied by special obligations? Do citizens of a democracy have an obligation to take an interest in politics and to actively influence political decision making? How should citizens respond when a democracy¿s laws become especially burdensome? Do citizens of a democracy have a special obligation to obey the law? In this course, we will read classical and contemporary political philosophy including Plato's Crito and King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to explore how political thinkers have understood and argued for the ethics of citizenship. Students in this course will draw on these materials to construct their own arguments, and to identify and assess implicit appeals to the ethics of citizenship in popular culture and contemporary public discourse, from The Simpsons to President Obama's speeches.

This course provides an overview of core ethical problems in international politics, with special emphasis on the question of what demands justice imposes on institutions and agents acting in a global context. It is divided into three sections. The first investigates the content of global justice, and comprises of readings from contemporary political theorists and philosophers who write within the liberal contractualist, utilitarian, cosmopolitan, and nationalist traditions. The second part looks at the obligations which global justice generates in relation to a series of real-world issues of international concern: global poverty, human rights, poverty and development, climate change and natural resources, international migration, and the well-being of women. The final section asks whether a democratic international order is necessary for global justice to be realized.

(Graduate students register for 276.) Why and under what conditions do human beings need political institutions? What makes them legitimate or illegitimate? What is the nature, source, and extent of the obligation to obey the legitimate ones, and how should people alter or overthrow the others? Study of the answers given to such questions by major political theorists of the early modern period: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant.