Books

Climate Justice Beyond the State (2021, Routledge)
Co-authored with Jeremy Moss.
Virtually every figure in the climate justice literature agrees that states are presently failing to discharge their duties to take action on climate change. Few, however, have attempted to think through what follows from that fact from a moral point of view. In Climate Justice Beyond the State, we argue that states’ failure to take action on climate change has important implications for the duties of the most important actors states contain within them – sub-national political communities, corporations, and individuals – actors that have been largely neglected in the climate justice literature, to date. Sub-national political communities and corporations, we argue, have duties to immediately, aggressively, and unilaterally reduce their emissions. Individuals, on the other hand, have duties to help promote collective action on climate change. Along the way, we make contributions to a range of related debates on topics including the nature of collective duties, the requirements of morality under conditions of partial compliance, and the nature of fairness-based duties.
You can preview the book, here.

Civic Engagement in Australian Democracy (2025, Anthem Press)
Co-edited with Sarah Murray
The Australian democratic system has long been regarded as one of the most stable and predictable in the world, with an entrenched two-party duopoly, compulsory voting ensuring high levels of electoral participation and relatively high levels of satisfaction with the democratic process. Yet the ways Australians engage with, and participate in, their democracy have shifted substantially in recent times. While a record proportion of Australians are now on the electoral roll, less than 1% belong to a political party, and the share of Australians that have always voted for the same party in Federal elections has declined from 72% in 1967 to 37% in 2022. Turnout in the 2022 Federal Election fell below 90% for the first time since the introduction of compulsory voting in 1924. Over 50% of voters cast their ballots early in 2022, up from around 10% in 2004. The advent of social media has afforded Australians a range of opportunities for political engagement but has also given rise to serious concerns surrounding the dissemination of misinformation. And Australians have also recently been afforded several historically rare opportunities for direct participation in the lawmaking process – particularly, the 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite and the 2023 referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament.
These developments give rise to a wide range of deep, difficult questions for Australian democracy, many of which have been under-explored. What, for instance, does the failure of the referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament mean for Australian democracy? What sorts of opportunities ought to be afforded to Australians for direct participation in government? How might climate change impact Australian democracy in the coming decades? How might the rise in early voting impact the character of Australian democracy? What opportunities do Australians have for engagement in civic life, and what obstacles do they face in exercising them?
This edited collection brings together specialists in the democratic process to consider such questions, alongside many others. Moreover, the collection is uniquely interdisciplinary, insofar as the contributors are drawn from a diverse range of fields – law, philosophy, political science and sociology. The chapters each help bring us a broader understanding of civic participation in Australian democracy, in order that we might evaluate the status quo, and gauge where it might be headed, in the future.
You can preview the book, here.

Climate Justice and Non-State Actors: Corporations, Regions, Cities, and Individuals (2020, Routledge)
Co-edited with Jeremy Moss.
The climate justice literature remains largely focused upon the rights and duties of states. Yet, for decades, states have failed to take adequate steps to address climate change. This has led some to suggest that, if severe climate change and its attendant harms are to be avoided, non-state actors of various kinds are going to have to step into the breach. The essays in this collection examine the climate duties of the most significant non-state actors – corporations, sub-national political communities, and individuals. Contributors include Susanne Burri, Stephanie Collins, Elizabeth Cripps, Garrett Cullity, Elisabeth Ellis, Benjamin Hale, Jeremy Moss, and Lachlan Umbers.
You can preview the book, here.