Contents: 1. The moral status of teaching and writing / Miriam Galston -- 2. Averroes on law and political well-being / Charles E. Butterworth -- 3. Prudence, imagination, and determination of law in Alfarabi and Maimonides / Joshua Parens -- 4. Averroes, Dante and the dawn of European enlightenment / Joel L. Kraemer -- 5. Law and innovation in Machiavelli's Prince / Nathan Tarcov -- 6. Resistance to punishment : controversies old and new / Thomas S. Schrock -- 7. The right to life and human dignity / Leon R. Kass -- 8. Swift sailing / Ryan Patrick Hanley -- 9. Montesquieu's prelude : an interpretation of book I of The spirit of laws / Stuart D. Warner -- 10. Adam Smith on natural liberty and moral corruption : the wisdom of nature and folly of legislators? / Lauren Brubaker -- 11. Who is publius? : the debate over the Constitution and the American Revolution / Michael Zuckert -- 12. Benjamin Franklin's biblical parable on toleration / Laurence Berns -- 13. Tocqueville as politician : revisiting the revolution of 1789 / Robert T. Gannett, Jr. -- 14. Tocqueville's understanding of "conditions of equality" and "conditions of inequality" / Gerald Stourzh -- 15. Democratic greatness in the founding / Harvey C. Mansfield -- 16. Justice overruled : the ambition of Xenophon's Cyrus the Great / Robert Faulkner -- 17. Plato and relativism / Christopher Bruell -- 18. Is there a right to live as we please? : (so long as we respect the right of others to do the same) / David Bolotin -- 19. Two nations were in her womb : contemporary liberal democracy and the political teaching of the Bible / Hillel Fradkin -- 20. Leo Strauss in his letters / Werner J. Dannhauser -- 21. How Strauss became Strauss / Heinrich Meier -- The writings of Ralph Lerner.