Papers

“Political Representation,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, with Suzanne Dovi, forthcoming.

Abstract: This article has several related aims. The first is to provide a general overview of the various conceptions of political representation, identifying the key components of these conceptions. The second is to highlight key debates about political representation and its components and thereby showcase how changing political realities have generated new and competing conceptions of political representation. Notably, many new conceptions concern forms of political representation that occur outside of familiar formal and institutional contexts, in which representation is thought to be a relationship between an elected representative and a determinate constituency. By accommodating other contexts of representation and expanding the meaning of different components of representation, new descriptive conceptions of what political representation is and normative conceptions of what political representatives should be doing have emerged. These new conceptions also offer different ways of envisioning the relationship between normative and descriptive accounts of representation. The final aim is to identify areas of future research.

“Précis of Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation,” Journal of Philosophical Research, forthcoming.

Abstract: In Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation, I provide a novel conceptual and normative theory of informal political representatives (IPRs), who speak or act for others despite having been neither elected nor selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure. IPRs are everywhere. Some are internationally recognized leaders of social movements. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. informally represented Black Montgomerians during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Black Americans generally throughout the course of the civil rights movement. Me Too movement leader Tarana Burke informally represents survivors of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment. Greta Thunberg informally represents Generation Z or, as she has put it, “we who have to live with the consequences” of climate change. Others are just our neighbors and friends. But when they go to the city council meeting to give voice to our neighborhood’s shared interests, they become our representatives, too. Despite IPRs’ ubiquity and significance to our political lives, their role is conceptually puzzling, morally troubling, and markedly undertheorized. The central ethical challenge of informal political representation is that IPRs can provide valuable political goods to those they represent; yet they are neither institutionally nor procedurally constrained in the ways formal political representatives (FPRs) like legislators are. Moreover, IPRs are often the only political actors working to advance the interests of oppressed and marginalized groups, meaning these groups rely on their IPRs. As a result, relationships between represented groups and their IPRs can be inegalitarian and oppressive. How may IPRs permissibly undertake activities central to their roles without thereby wronging those they represent? This is the question that drives my book.

“The Speaking For Spectrum: A Reply to Estlund and Iavarone-Turcotte,” Journal of Philosophical Research, forthcoming.

Abstract: In this essay, I respond to both David Estlund’s “But Do They Speak for Black People?” (2025) and Anne Iavarone-Turcotte’s “Speaking for Others Beyond Representation” (2025) commentaries on my book, Speaking for Others: The Ethics of Informal Political Representation (2024). Estlund asks whether my definitions of “representation” and “speaking for” stretch the meanings of these terms too far beyond their “ordinary uses.” In reply, I explain the senses of “speaking for,” “representation,” and “representative” I use in Speaking for Others and show that my use is not novel. I further introduce what I call “the speaking for spectrum,” which accommodates a variety of related senses of this phrase. I conclude by restating the main aim of Speaking for Others: to understand better the familiar but undertheorized social practice of informal political representation, whereby people speak or act for others despite having been neither elected nor selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure. Iavarone-Turcotte explores how the “novel principles and criteria” I introduce in Speaking for Others apply to contexts “outside the core of” the book’s central focus (2025). She does so by raising questions concerning the relationship between representation and speaking for, self-appointed spokespersons, intragroup marginalization, and two principles I introduce and examine in Speaking for Others: the descriptive preference principle and the nonmember deference principle. In answering these questions, I reaffirm the scope of the argument advanced in Speaking for Others and welcome the application of my theory to novel contexts beyond that scope.

"Racism, White Supremacy, Populism, and Political Agency: A Response to Bossen," in Bossen, American Populism and Unitarian Universalism (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).

Abstract: I put to Bossen a series of related questions and remarks about (1) whether his working definition of the term “white supremacy” captures all that we might hope it would, (2) the relationship between white supremacy and racism, (3) how historical analysis can and ought to guide our actions, (4) whether we are primarily concerned here with political ontology or political agency, and (5) what, if anything, can be said in favor of populism simpliciter.

“Critical Precis of Pressly, ‘The Right to be Forgotten and the Value of an Open Future,’” PEA Soup Blog, December 3, 2024.

Abstract: In “The Right to be Forgotten and the Value of an Open Future,” Lowry Pressly provides a novel account of the moral grounds of the right to be forgotten, which gives “individuals…the power to anonymize or remove historically accurate information about themselves from the internet” (65). This “power is justified,” Pressly tells us, “because the presence of such information online can pose a significant threat to human well-being” (65). In this essay, I raise the following questions: (1) What exactly does the moral basis of the right to be forgotten have to do with autonomy or self-determination? (2) What, if anything, does Pressly think the informational autonomy family of views gets right? (3) And how different, exactly, are the informational autonomy views from the agentive confidence view Pressly proposes as an alternative? (4) How robust is Pressly's account of the strength of the relationship between agentive confidence and the right to be forgotten--would the relationship be as strong in societies with slightly different norms? I conclude by challenging (1) the idea that the right to be forgotten is responding to a problem that is truly new or sui generis, and (2) the idea that the right itself is up to the task it is being asked to undertake.

"You Say I Want a Revolution," Monist 107, no. 1 (2024): 39–56, https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onad029

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Abstract: An underexamined insight of W. E. B. Du Bois’s John Brown is that John Brown worked for much of his life to cultivate democratic relationships with the Black Americans with and for whom he worked. Brown did so through practicing deference and deliberation, and by seeking authorization. However, Brown’s commitment to these practices faltered at a crucial moment in decisionmaking: when he raided Harpers Ferry absent widespread support. Examining this aspect of John Brown brings into relief an overlooked tragic choice Brown made: To act in accordance with his own substantive vision of what justice required, Brown eschewed democratic ideals and practices that grounded the distinctive relations of equality he had cultivated with the Black communities with and for whom he worked.

“Speaking for Others from the Bench," Legal Theory 29, no. 2 (2023): 151–184, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352325223000083

Winner of the 2025 Fred Berger Memorial Prize.
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Abstract: In this article, I introduce and examine the novel concept of bench representation. Jurists and scholars have extensively examined whether judges are or ought to be considered symbolic representatives of abstract concepts (for instance, the law, equality, or justice), representatives of society as a whole, or descriptive representatives of the social groups from which they hail. However, little attention has been paid to the question whether judges act as representatives for the parties before them through their everyday work on the bench. This article examines that question. Bench representation occurs when a judge, through statements or actions undertaken during the performance of official duties, speaks or acts for a party to the proceeding before them. I argue that serving as a bench representative is a common and valuable feature of what it is to be a judge and, despite appearances, usually undermines neither impartiality nor fairness.

“Democracy Within, Justice Without: The Duties of Informal Political Representatives,” Noûs 56, no. 4 (2022): 940–971, https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12391

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Abstract: Informal political representation can be a political lifeline, particularly for oppressed and marginalized groups. Such representation can give these groups some say, however mediate, partial, and imperfect, in how things go for them. Coeval with the political goods such representation offers these groups are its particular dangers for them. Mindful of these dangers, skeptics challenge the practice for being, inter alia, unaccountable, unauthorized, inegalitarian, and oppressive. These challenges provide strong pro tanto reasons to think the practice morally impermissible. This paper considers the question: On what conditions is the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups permissible? By responding to skeptics’ challenges, I develop a systematic account of moral constraints that, if adopted, would make such representation permissible. The account that emerges shows that informal political representatives (IPRs) must aim to fulfill two sets of sometimes conflicting duties to the represented: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative’s actions advance the aims of the representation.

“The Conscription of Informal Political Representatives,” Journal of Political Philosophy 29, no. 4 (2021): 429–455, https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12246

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Abstract: Informal political representation—the phenomenon of speaking or acting on behalf of others although one has not been elected or selected to do so by means of a systematized election or selection procedure—plays a crucial role in advancing the interests of groups. Sometimes, those who emerge as informal political representatives (IPRs) do so willingly (voluntary representatives). But, often, people end up being IPRs, either in their private lives or in more public political forums, over their own protests (unwilling representatives) or even without their knowledge (unwitting representatives)—that is, they are conscripted. None of the few theories of informal political representation extant accommodate conscripted IPRs. The account detailed here introduces the phenomenon of conscripted informal political representation and explains its place in a complete theory of informal political representation. Conscripted IPRs can, like their voluntary counterparts, come to have significant power to influence how various audiences regard those for whom the conscripted IPRs speak or act. Upon attaining such power to influence, conscripted IPRs, like their voluntary counterparts, come to have pro tanto duties to those they represent—duties that arise despite IPRs’ unwittingness or unwillingness. Understanding the phenomenon of conscripted informal political representation allows us to surface essential normative questions about informal political representation that are otherwise occluded.

“Judicial Representation,” in Disability, Health, Law, and Bioethics, eds. I. Glenn Cohen, Carmel Shachar, Anita Silvers, and Michael Ashley Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 211–220, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108622851.023.

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Abstract: Many types of representation, although ubiquitous and consequential, remain undertheorized. In this article, I set out the beginnings of a theory for one such phenomenon: judicial representation. Judicial representation occurs when, by virtue of what a judge says from the bench, they come to speak or act on behalf of the members of a social group whose interests are at stake in a case. After developing a preliminary account of this phenomenon, I consider the value and dangers of judges representing groups of which they are not members. I do so by examining Justice Marshall’s representation of people with severe intellectual disabilities in his partial dissent in Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center.

I have also written on a variety of bioethical and health law topics for Bill of Health, the blog of the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School.