and David Spitz Book Prize from the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, New York, awarded annually for the best book in liberal and/or democratic theory that had been published two years earlier. The book develops a conception of perfectionist liberalism. In defending his conception of perfectionist liberalism, Raz argues that political institutions are justified by virtue of their contribution to persons' well-being. He argues that a person's well-being depends on ability to pursue personal goals. However, in Raz's view, well-being does not occur upon achievement of any self-set goal. Rather, in David McCabe's words, "successful pursuit of objectively valuable goals" produces well-being according to Raz. Raz's argument for perfectionist liberalism follows from this view of well-being combined with two other premises. First, that human goalsand, therefore, human well-beingare conceived through, and depend on, what McCabe calls "social forms". Social forms are ways of being and acting that are developed socially and make sense only in the context of a given society. For example, one can only understand the social roles of a physician, friend, or parent by considering the rights and obligations that attach to that role in a social context. The second premise of the argument is that people need autonomy to occupy many social forms in liberal societies and achieve the goals that these social forms set out. Thus, a person must be autonomous to achieve the goals set by the social forms in a liberal society. Combined with Raz's view that political institutions are justified by virtue of their contribution to well-being and his argument that well-being, for humans, depends on social forms, his claim about autonomy shows that autonomy is necessary for well-being wherever social forms require autonomy. If liberal societies' social forms require autonomy, then liberal societies should support autonomy. Philosophy of law A pupil of H. L. A. Hart, Raz was important in continuing the development of legal positivism both before and since Hart's death. Raz was also co-editor of a second edition of Hart's The Concept of Law with a postscript including Hart's responses to other philosophers' criticisms of his work. Raz argued for a distinctive understanding of legal commands as exclusionary reasons for action and for the "service conception" of authority, according to which those subject to an authority "can benefit by its decisions only if they can establish their existence and content in ways which do not depend on