The Public's Law

The Public's Law is a theory and history of democracy in the American administrative state. The book describes how American Progressive thinkers - such as John Dewey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Woodrow Wilson - developed a democratic understanding of the state from their study of Hegelian political thought.

G.W.F. Hegel understood the state as an institution that regulated society in the interest of freedom. This normative account of the state distinguished his view from later German theorists, su...