Brian Barry enjoys a reputation as a leading political thinker, interested both in theories about how social institutions ought to work and theories about how they do work. He is particularly concerned with the connections between the two kinds of theory. There is widely perceived to be a crisis in liberal political philosophy, and a number of the pieces collected here ask what intellectual resources are available to defend a system of liberal rights. The volume also contains Barry's writings on international and intergeneration justice as well as an essay on the general topic of distributive justice that reflects his most recent thinking on the subject. Written in an accessible style which does not presuppose any previous knowledge of the field, this book should prove indispensable to students as well as for the enthusiast with an interest in the central problems of political theory.