This paper examines John Stuart Mill's discussion of economic liberty and individual liberty, and his view of the relationship between the two. It explores how, and how effectively, Mill developed his arguments about the two liberties; reveals the lineages of thought from which they derived; and considers how his arguments were altered by political economists not long after his death. It is argued that the distinction Mill drew between the two liberties provided him with a framework of concepts which legitimised significant government intervention in economic matters without restricting individual liberty.

This thesis examines the scope and possibilities of liberal thinking in a post-Enlightenment and pluralistic era. It draws upon three liberal philosophers--Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and Richard Rorty--who offer alternative ways of re-accommodating liberalism in the shadow of pluralism. The dissertation argues that Rawls's "comprehensive liberalism" and Rorty's "reductive liberalism" face important limitations in their attempts to integrate pluralism into liberal thought. Building upon an exegetical analysis of the three thinkers, this dissertation offers, instead, a defense of a "minimalist liberalism"--a liberalism à la Berlin that is capable of accommodating a plural view of values, of the social practices that lodge them, and of ourselves as carriers of those values. Minimalist liberalism bears an "elective affinity" with pluralism, where "elective affinity" is understood as a normative and historical reinforcing connection between liberalism and pluralism on account of their reciprocal capacity for inclusiveness. The implication of this analysis is that minimalist liberalism must curb its own scope and ambition, and it requires for its justification a sharper yet more multifaceted independence of political theory from moral reasoning than either Rawls or Rorty suggest.

This thesis contributes to an understanding of the pathways of civic influence into the least dangerous branch of American politics - the Judicial Branch. Specifically, this thesis examines the influence of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy - a conservative and libertarian legal network of more than 40,000 members - on twelve of the most salient Supreme Court decisions concerning federalism and the separation of powers over the last three decades. As a special case, it also examines Federalist Society influence on a subset of controversial Executive Branch policies issued under George W. Bush. To understand the unique nature of this civic group's influence, it establishes the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy as a kind of epistemic community; i.e., a network of legal professionals and civic leaders bound together and shaped by a set of beliefs about law, the nature of government, and constitutional interpretation. Using this framework, it proceeds to demonstrate how individual members of the Federalist Society acted as "cognitive baggage handlers," carrying these shared ideas into their roles as judges, academics, litigators, and government officials. Finally, it evaluates the extent to which these actors were successful or not in diffusing the epistemic community's ideas into law and policy. It finds that while there is substantial evidence of Federalist Society influence in the areas of federalism and separation of powers, overall the results have been mixed. The final chapter examines why that was and speculates as to the conditions that might facilitate and frustrate epistemic community influence more generally.