I'm a philosopher, affiliated with Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics. While my research ranges across philosophical topics, I have an abiding interest in meritocracy. I’ve written a monograph advancing a meritocratic theory of justice, Justice and the Meritocratic State, which is available Open Access. I’m also the author of the “Meritocracy” entry for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A summary of my views can be found in a recent interview I did for 3:16.

Before coming to academia, I served in the U.S. Navy and as a Case Officer in the Central Intelligence Agency.

My CV can be found here, and you can e-mail me at thomas DOT mulligan AT georgetown DOT edu.
 


Publications

Book: Justice and the Meritocratic State (2018) Routledge

Journal articles and book chapters:

(19) “Equal Opportunity, Not Reparations” (forthcoming) Handbook of Equality of Opportunity
(18) “Intuition about Justice: Desertist or Luck Egalitarian?” (w/ H. Brouwer) (forthcoming) Journal of Ethics
(17) “Optimizing Political Influence: A Jury Theorem with Dynamic Competence and Dependence” (forthcoming) Social Choice and Welfare
(16) “A Bayesian Solution to Hallsson’s Puzzle” (2023) Inquiry 66: 1914-27
(15) “Meritocracy” (2023) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(14) “How East Meets West: Justice and Consequences in Confucian Meritocracy” (2022) Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture 37: 17-38
(13) “The Epistemology of Disagreement: Why Not Bayesianism?” (2021) Episteme 18: 587-602
(12) “Equal Pay for All: An Idea Whose Time Has Not, and Will Not, Come” (2021) Debating Equal Pay for All: Economy, Practicability and Ethics 21-35
(11) “Social Choice or Collective Decision-making: What Is Politics All About?” (2020) What Is Pluralism? 48-61
(10) “Why Not Be a Desertist? Three Arguments for Desert and Against Luck Egalitarianism” (w/ H. Brouwer) (2019) Philosophical Studies 176: 2271-88
(9) “Do People Deserve their Economic Rents?” (2018) Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics 11: 163-90
(8) “Plural Voting for the Twenty-first Century” (2018) Philosophical Quarterly 68: 286-306
(7) “What’s Wrong with Libertarianism: A Meritocratic Diagnosis” (2018) The Routledge Handbook of Libertarianism 77-91
(6) “Uncertainty in Hiring Does Not Justify Affirmative Action” (2017) Philosophia 45: 1299-1311
(5) “A Note on the Epistemology of Disagreement and Politics” (2016) Political Theory 44: 657-63
(4) “Disagreement, Peerhood, and Three Paradoxes of Conciliationism” (2015) Synthese 192: 67-78
(3) “The Limits of Liberal Tolerance” (2015) Public Affairs Quarterly 29: 277-95
(2) “On the Compatibility of Epistocracy and Public Reason” (2015) Social Theory and Practice 41: 458-76
(1) “On Harry Frankfurt’s ‘Equality as a Moral Ideal’” (2015) Ethics 125: 1171-73