The book's strength lies in its intellectual rigor. William Edmundson starts at some specific notion of rights and follows its reasoning to the end: either the reader sees the final consequences or Edmundson sees the arrival of a new question. Or he begins with the contrast between two apparently similar ideas, and then follows this contrast as far as it will go. The result is a fertile field for classroom discussions.



Edmundson frequently offers an abstract line of reasoning without supporting examples. In places almost every sentence could open a lengthy exchange. The result is a book where ideas travel fast and the reading is often dense. One hopes that the professors dish out the parts of the book in bite-size pieces.