About the Journal

The Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (jesp) is a peer-reviewed online journal in moral, social, political, and legal philosophy. The journal was founded on the principle of publisher-funded open access. There are no publication fees for authors, and public access to articles is free of charge. Articles are typically published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license, though authors can request a different Creative Commons license if one is required for funding purposes. Funding for the journal has been made possible through the generous commitment of the Division of Arts and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi.

jesp aspires to be the leading venue for the best new work in the fields that it covers, and it is governed by a correspondingly high editorial standard. The journal welcomes submissions of articles in any of these and related fields of research. The journal is interested in work in the history of ethics that bears directly on topics of contemporary interest but does not consider articles of purely historical interest. It is the view of the editors that the journal’s high standard does not preclude publishing work that is critical in nature, provided that it is constructive, well argued, current, and of sufficiently general interest. jesp also endorses and abides by the Barcelona Principles for a Globally Inclusive Philosophy, which seek to address the structural inequality between native and nonnative English speakers in academic philosophy.

jesp publishes articles, discussion notes, and occasional symposia. Articles normally do not exceed 12,000 words (including notes and references). jesp sometimes publishes longer articles, but submissions over 12,000 words are evaluated according to a proportionally higher standard. Discussion notes, which need not engage with work that was published in jesp, should not exceed 3,000 words (including notes and references). jesp does not publish book reviews.

Papers are published in pdf format. All published papers receive a permanent doi and are archived both internally and externally.

jesp was founded in 2005 by Andrei Marmor, James Dreier, Julia Driver, and David Estlund, with the financial and technical support of the usc Gould School of Law and the usc Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, in which Marmor held joint appointments. Their aspiration was to provide a model for a directly university-funded, completely open-access publication at the very highest standard of peer review—to show how a journal can be at once one of the most well-run and prestigious venues for leading work in the fields of social, political, and legal philosophy and ethics, broadly construed, yet entirely free for authors and readers, allowing for fast, easy publication with worldwide impact.

In 2024, jesp’s financial base shifted to the Division of Arts and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi, the institutional home of the two current editors-in-chief.

Sarah Paul, New York University Abu Dhabi
Matthew Silverstein, New York University Abu Dhabi

Sameer Bajaj, University of Warwick
Rima Basu, Claremont McKenna College
Saba Bazargan-Forward, University of California, San Diego
Brian Berkey, University of Pennsylvania
Krister Bykvist, Stockholm University
James Dreier, Brown University
Julia Driver, University of Texas at Austin
Alex Gregory, University of Southampton
Christie Hartley, Georgia State University
Renée Jørgensen, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Anthony Laden, University of Illinois Chicago
Coleen Macnamara, University of California, Riverside
Elinor Mason, University of California, Santa Barbara
Simon Căbulea May, Florida State University
Josh Milburn, Loughborough University
Tristram McPherson, Ohio State University
Hille Paakkunainen, Syracuse University
Sam Shpall, University of Sydney
Kevin Toh, University College London
Mark van Roojen, University of Nebraska
Han van Wietmarschen, University College London
Kenneth Walden, Dartmouth College
Lori Watson, Washington University in St. Louis
Jonathan Way, University of Southampton

Errol Lord, University of Pennsylvania

Louise Simpson

Lisa Y. Gourd

Susan Wampler

Matthew Silverstein

Elizabeth Anderson
David Brink
John Broome
Joshua Cohen
Jonathan Dancy
John Finnis
Leslie Green
Karen Jones
Frances Kamm
Will Kymlicka
S. Matthew Liao
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
Andrei Marmor
Stephen Perry
Philip Pettit
Gerald Postema
Henry Richardson
Thomas M. Scanlon
Tamar Schapiro
David Schmidtz
Mark Schroeder
Russ Shafer-Landau
Tommie Shelby
Sarah Stroud
Valerie Tiberius
Peter Vallentyne
Gary Watson
Kit Wellman
Susan Wolf

issn: 1559-3061
oclc: 59823291
lccn: 2005216404