This study aims to teach the reader how to read and judge claims of authority made by others and how to decide to which institutions and practices should authority be granted. Thinkers such as Plato, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Mandela and Lincoln are incorporated into the discussion.

PrefaceAcknowledgmentsI: The Claims of the World on the Self, the Self on the World1: Plato's CRITO: The Authority of Law and PhilosophyII: Creating a Public World2: Shakespeare's RICHARD II: Imagining the Modern World3: Hooker's Preface to the LAWES OF ECCLESIASTICALL POLITIE: Constituting Authority in Argument4: Hale's "Considerations Touching the Amendment or Alteration of Lawes": Determining the Authority of the Past5: PLANNED PARENTHOOD v. CASEY: Legal Judgment as an Ethical and Cultural ArtIII: The Authority of the Self6: Austen's MANSFIELD PARK: Making the Self Out of--and Against--the Culture7: Dickinson's Poetry: Transforming the Authority of LanguageIV: Reconstituting Self and World: The Creation of Authority as an Act of Hope8: Mandela's Speech from the Dock and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address: Giving Meaning to Life in an Unjust WorldAfterwordAdditional NotesIndex