Jonathan Quong, "Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice" (Princeton UP, 2026)
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What is the central puzzle of legitimate injustice that the book addresses?
Welcome to the new books network.
Welcome to New Books in Philosophy, part of the New Books Network. My name is Blaine Neufeld. I'm a f professor of philosophy who specializes in political and moral theory. And I'm an an interviewer here at New Books in Philosophy, along with Kerry Figdor and Sarah Tyson. can also be unjust, but nonetheless also be morally legitimate. It is a widespread widespread view within liberal democratic societies that many laws and policies within those societies are unjust. But many citizens of those societies also think that these laws and policies, if they have been democratically enacted, nonetheless can be legitimately imposed upon society by public officials. This is a bit perplexing upon initial reflection.
How can such unjust laws be legitimate if justice is the first virtue of social institutions? This question is explored in a recent book from Princeton University Press called Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice. Its author is Jonathan Kuang, who is professor of philosophy and law at the University of Southern California. In his book, Kuang explores and evaluates recent work on this topic and concludes by proposing his own novel account of the the phenomenon of legitimate injustice. We are fortunate to have the author of Political Philosophy, The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice, Jonathan Kuang, here with us today. Hello, John. Hi, Blaine. It's great to be here. Well, thanks very much for agreeing to do this interview.
Thanks for having me. Let's start our discussion by getting to know a little bit about you. Perhaps you could say a few things about who you are. So namely like where you're from, your background, how you became interested in political philosophy, that kind of thing.
Sure. Uh so I'm originally uh from Vancouver, Canada. Uh, but I did my graduate work in the UK. And I spent the first ten years of my career at the University of Manchester before I moved uh to the University of Southern California. In terms of how I became interested in political philosophy, I mean I've always been interested in politics. Uh, you know, from when I was fairly young, a teenager, kind of doing leaflets for the NDP in Canada. Uh, but when I went to university, uh, I did my degrees in political science, but I fairly quickly realized the part of political science that kind of most gripped me was political. Yeah. Um, but as you know, political theory as it's taught in North American political science departments sometimes looks a bit different uh than analytic political philosophy.
So I didn't really fully understand what analytic political philosophy was and I didn't really fall in love with it until I moved to the UK to do my graduate work. And uh I I went to Oxford and one of the very first uh talks that I attended as a graduate student there was a talk by the legendary uh political philosopher Jerry Cohen, who gave uh what was then, you know, an early version of his paper called Freedom and Money. And I'd never seen anything like that. And I remember walking back from the lecture with uh some friends and they were busy kind of working through the argument, trying to figure out where the argument in Jerry's paper went wrong. Uh, but I was kind of preoccupied by a totally different thought, which is that was awesome and I want to be able to learn how to do philosophy like that.
Um, and uh that's kind of when I I think I probably really got hooked.
Great. That's very interesting. And I I just want to on a personal note uh mention that that I kind of had a parallel track. Um I'm from Ontario and I initially studied political science as well. And I went to Oxford and I too uh witnessed the brilliance of Jerry Cohen. And then and after after that experience, I've kind of realized that well, that's what I want to do. Um and I sort of ch it sort of changed the course of of my life. So it's an intr interesting uh parallel or similar uh route that we both took there. Yeah, until well. So uh could you tell us a bit about uh your new book, uh Political Philosophy, The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the central puzzle of legitimate injustice that the book addresses?
0:01–7:12
2
How does Jonathan Quong’s personal background shape his interest in political philosophy?
7:12–14:23
3
Why can laws be both unjust and still be considered legitimate according to the author?
14:23–22:08
4
What are the three conflicting claims that form the ‘trilemma’ of legitimate injustice?
22:08–29:02
5
How do contemporary Kantian theorists attempt to dissolve the puzzle and why does Quong reject their approach?
29:02–36:27
6
What is the instrumental (service‑conception) account of political authority and why does Quong find it insufficient?
36:27–43:34
7
How does the democratic‑egalitarian view explain legitimacy of unjust laws, and what is the ‘weighing problem’?
43:34–52:40
8
How does Quong’s final ‘legitimate injustice’ solution use distributive justice to resolve the puzzle?
52:40–1:01:23
Speakers
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