J.S. Mill argues against licensing or forced medical examinations of prostitutes even if these would reduce harm, for two reasons: the state should not legitimize immoral conduct; and coercing prostitutes would violate Mill's harm principle as they do not risk causing non-consensual harm to others, their clients do. There is nothing puzzling about Mill opposing coercive restrictions on self-regarding immoral conduct while also opposing state support of that conduct. But why does Mill oppose restrictions on prostitutes’ liberty if those restrictions could prevent harm to third parties? Mill's position is not puzzling once we recognize that his harm principle is not a harm-prevention principle that warrants restrictions on liberty to prevent harm no matter who caused it (as David Lyons famously argued) but instead warrants restrictions on liberty only of individuals who are the morally relevant cause of that harm. Mill's discussion of prostitution shows he prioritizes both individuality and moral progress over harm reduction.

Mill didn't resolve this puzzle: if prostitution must be tolerated according to his principle of liberty as it doesn't non-consensually harm others, why punish the accessory – the pimp? Yet in On Liberty's passage on pimps (CW 18:296–7) Mill seriously considers restricting pimps’ speech for reasons other than preventing harm: pimps’ speech undermines decisional autonomy for purposes the state regards as immoral, and in response the state may use coercion to counteract such immoral influences. In light of this, I argue that we need to rethink the standard view that Mill opposes restrictions on speech that does not harm others.

Some critics of John Stuart Mill understand him to advocate the forced assimilation of people he regards as uncivilized and to defend toleration and the principle of liberty only for civilized people of the West. Examination of Mill's social and political writings and practice while serving the British East India Company shows, instead, that Mill is a tolerant imperialist: Mill defends interference in India to promote the protection of legal rights, respect and toleration for conflicting viewpoints, and a commercial society that can cope with natural threats. He does not think the principle of liberty is waived for the uncivilized or that the West should forcibly reshape them in its own monistic image. Mill's tolerant imperialism reflects a tension between liberty and moral development that also surfaces when Mill thinks about the scope of government in civilized societies.

Christopher Eisgruber takes a pragmatic approach to judicial review. Most judges and scholars would decide whether a branch of government acts legitimately by asking whether its actions were authorized or prohibited by some provision in the Constitution. The common assumption is that during the constitutional convention, states agreed to give up some of their powers in order to establish a new federal government with enumerated powers, at the same time explicitly setting limits both to the federal government and to states. By turning to the terms of this agreement, Supreme Court Justices seek to answer whether Congress, the president, or the state or local government in question acted within its rights. Eisgruber regards such assumptions about state sovereignty as “mystical” (p. 186). Instead, he would have us question, in deciding whether, say, Congress should be permitted to regulate the possession of guns in school zones, that this is the sort of thing a national government can “do well” (p. 186). Whether it was the intention of those who wrote or ratified the Constitution to give Congress this power is, to Eisgruber, more or less irrelevant.