Shmuel Nili is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. Nili's work focuses on links between domestic and global injustice, particularly as these relate to corporate agency, corruption, and abuse of power. He has published widely on these themes in multiple leading journals. The same themes also dominate Nili's first three books: The People's Duty (Cambridge University Press, 2019); Integrity: Personal and Political (Oxford University Press, 2020); and Philosophizing the indefensible (Oxford University Press, 2023).
In this wise and compassionate book, Shmulik Nili, grasping the nettle of our ""third best"" world, tackles the exploitation of our legal and financial systems by lawless dictators and gangsters. Exploring what he encapsulates as the ""shadow of violence,"" Nili offers a carefully reasoned and richly informed treatment of an important and general question of practical ethics: What do those who benefit from the rule of law and democracy owe to those who don't? His treatment of the distorting ripples of large-scale criminal and private violence, which characterizes too many societies around the world, is especially valuable and insightful. * Aziz Z. Huq, Frank and Bernice J. Greenberg Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago Law School *