William A. Edmundson

William A. Edmundson, is Regents’ Professor of Law and Philosophy, Emeritus, at Georgia State University, in Atlanta. He earned his Ph.D in philosophy from the University of California-Berkeley and his J.D., from Duke Law School.

Edmundson has written on animal rights, coercion, the duty to obey the law, distributive justice, political equality, punishment, privacy, and other topics in the areas of moral and political philosophy and the philosophy of law.

Edmundson is the author of The Social Contract (2025); John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (2017); An Introduction to Rights (2d ed. 2012; Portuguese ed., 2006); and Three Anarchical Fallacies (1998). He edited The Duty to Obey the Law (1999) and co-edited The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory (2004).

Articles by Edmundson have appeared in Ethics, the Journal of Political Philosophy, Legal Theory, the Journal of Moral Philosophy, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Law and Philosophy, the Michigan Law Review, the Iowa Law Review and elsewhere.