Does America still play by the rules it helped create? This book addresses this question as it applies to US behavior in relation to international human rights. It seeks to show and explain how America's approach to human rights differs from that of other Western nations. It includes essays by Stanley Hoffmann, Paul Kahn, and Harold Koh.

The contributors use Ignatieff's essay as a jumping-off point to discuss specific types of exceptionalism - America's approach to capital punishment and to free speech, for example - or to explore the social, cultural, and institutional roots of exceptionalism. These essays - most of which appear in print here for the first time, and all of which have been revised or updated since being presented in a year-long lecture series on American exceptionalism at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government - are by Stanley Hoffmann, Paul Kahn, Harold Koh, Frank Michelman, Andrew Moravcsik, John Ruggie, Frederick Schauer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Carol Steiker, and Cass Sunstein.

Chapter 1. Introduction: American Exceptionalism and Human Rights by Michael Ignatieff 1
PART I. THE VARIETIES OF EXCEPTIONALISM 27
Chapter 2. The Exceptional First Amendment by Frederick Schauer 29
Chapter 3. Capital Punishment and American Exceptionalism by Carol S. Steiker 57
Chapter 4. Why Does the American Constitution Lack Social and Economic Guarantees? By Cass R. Sunstein 90
Chapter 5. America's Jekyll-and-Hyde Exceptionalism by Harold Hongju Koh 111 PART II. EXPLAINING EXCEPTIONALISM 145
Chapter 6. The Paradox of U.S.Human Rights Policy by Andrew Moravcsik 147
Chapter 7. American Exceptionalism, Popular Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law by Paul W. Kahn 198
PART III. EVALUATING EXCEPTIONALISM 223
Chapter 8. American Exceptionalism: The New Version by Stanley Hoffmann 225
Chapter 9. Integrity-Anxiety? by Frank I. Michelman 241
Chapter 10. A Brave New Judicial World by Anne-Marie Slaughter 277
Chapter 11. American Exceptionalism, Exemptionalism, and Global Governance by John Gerard Ruggie 304
Contributors 339
Index 341