Tempering Power

Martin Krygier is Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory, Faculty of Law and Justice, University of New South Wales. He is the author of Philip Selznick: Ideals in the World (2012), Civil Passions (2005), and Between Fear and Hope (1997). He is also an editor of Anti-Constitutional Populism (2022); Spreading Democracy and the Rule of Law? (2006); Rethinking the Rule of Law after Communism (2005); The Rule of Law after Communism (1999); Marxism and Communism (1994); Bureaucracy: The Career of a Concept (1980). He was the winner of the 2016 Dennis Leslie Mahoney Prize in Legal Theory.

• PART I. INTRODUCTION: 1. What and Why; 2. Trajectories PART II. APPROACHES: 3. False Starts; 4. Ends and Means; PART III. STAKES: 5. Mischief; 6. Remedy; PART IV. IMPLICATIONS & COMPLICATIONS; 7. Power; 8. Law; 9. '&' or 'In'? 10. Contexts & Connections; 11. Conclusions.

'Martin Krygier's Tempering Power is a tonic for disappointments with our tarnished democracies. It elegantly reconfigures how we think about the rule of law, its history and future as a concept. Krygier shows how tempering power is a fertile foundation for a more decent constitutional architecture, and a civil society architecture, for the dangerous challenges of this century. It is no less than a foundation that can help to prevent wars, help prevent ecological collapse, moderate the burgeoning globalization of disease, temper the excesses and hallucinations of AIs. This is a meaning-making book for readers who care about the fate of freedom for an era of daunting challenges.' John Braithwaite, Australian National University