Dostoyevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov is constructed around the very complex and compelling ideal that action – committing an act and thereby causing something to be – is only one and perhaps a trivial element in the moral economy of guilt and wrongdoing. In the novel, all the brothers are guilty of their father's death, although only one of them has killed him, because each recognizes that he might have done so instead. Dostoyevsky plays with a not uncommon thought: the awareness of one's actual character traits sometimes warrants feelings of guilt and responsibility, ordinarily ascribed only to wrongdoers. We are responsible in this view, if we have the sort of character that could have done it, even though we did not actually do it; Gunter Grass' sardonic and rueful introspections trade on this thought, and much of the literature on collective violence, during partition, derives its power from holding us responsible by asking: are you the sort of person who could have done it? Even others wrongdoing can impugn our character and our values make us feel guilty and responsible, even if we did not ourselves do anything wrong. All we need to do is counterfactually establish that we could have done it. The suspicion that one might oneself be capable of acting wrongly or monstrously is an instance of what Christopher Kutz has called counterfactual guilt.

“Compelling action by authorities of the states through the power of mandamus is an inherent power vested in the judiciary,” said India's Prime Minister, but warned that “substituting mandamus with a takeover of the functions of another organ may, at times, become a case of over-reach…these are all delicate issues which need to be addressed cautiously.” Manmohan Singh was speaking at a conference of regional chief ministers and high court chief justices in April 2007. A similar point was made by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in March 2007 who cautioned the courts on legitimate and illegitimate intervention; and also by the Speaker of the legislature who said, “I will be failing in my duty if I do not point out that there has been an encroachment in the legislative arena.” These cautionary words from the heads of the legislature, executive, and the judiciary imply that the Indian courts have not just been activist, but over-activist. Is that true?

In the last two decades, the higher judiciary in India transformed non-justiciable economic and social rights such as basic education, health, food, shelter, speedy trial, privacy, anti–child labor, and equal wages for equal work into legally enforceable rights. In a famous judgment on the right to education, the judges even said that a right could be treated as fundamental even if it was not present in the fundamental rights section of the constitution.

Any discussion of Adam Smith's conception of self-interest labors under the shadow of Smith's encrusted reputation, summarized in George Stigler's claim that “The Wealth of Nations is a stupendous palace erected upon the granite of self interest.” Many puzzles of Smith interpretation, including the so-called “Adam Smith Problem” take this claim as a starting axiom. The Adam Smith Problem referred to the alleged inconsistency between The Wealth of Nations, which seemed to be premised on the claim that every individual was essentially self-interested, and The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which was based on a psychological principle of sympathy. This charge of inconsistency rests on a gross misunderstanding. Sympathy, for Smith, was not a principle of benevolence. It was rather a mechanism for moral judgment that allowed the agent to judge the appropriateness of all behavior. Within the judgments generated by the impartial spectator, there would be room for the proper pursuit of self-interest.