Argues that a political and legal philosophy based on pluralism confronts the problems of the twenty-first century.

Part I. Liberal Justice and Fleeting Specters of Unity: 1. Reframing comprehensive pluralism: Hegel versus Rawls; 2. Equality and the dialectic between identity and difference; 3. Human rights and the clash between universalism and relativism: the case of minority group rights; Part II. E Pluribus Unum?: 4. Spinoza's dialectic and the paradoxes of tolerance: can unity be willed out of necessity?; 5. The clash between deprivatized religion and relativized secularism: the constitutional conundrum; 6. Dworkin and the one law principle: can unity be imposed through an interpretive turn?; Part III. Can Pluralism Thrive in Times of Stress? On Globalization, Terror and the Clash of Cultures: 7. Rethinking political rights in times of stress: can pluralism thwart the progression from stress to crisis?; 8. Derrida's deconstructive ethics of difference confronts global terrorism: can democracy survive the autoimmune ravage of the terror within us?; 9. Habermas's discourse ethics of identity and global terror: can cosmopolitanism, postnationalism, and dialogue downsize the terrorist threat?; 10. Conclusion: the hopes of pluralism in a more unified and more fragmented world.

Michel Rosenfeld is the Justice Sydney L. Robins Professor of Human Rights at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he is also Director of the Program on Global and Comparative Constitutional Theory. He is the co-editor-in-chief of International Journal of Constitutional Law and the author or co-editor of numerous books, most recently The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law (2011) (co-edited with Andras Sajo) and The Identity of the Constitutional Subject: Selfhood, Citizenship, Culture and Community (2010). Among his many honors, Rosenfeld received the French government's highest and most prestigious award, the Legion of Honor.