Unobjectionable inequalities Nico Kolodny, The Pecking Order. Social Hierarchy as a Philosophical Problem (Harvard University Press, 2023).George Letsas, Status in Law and Morality (Oxford University Press, 2026).

This review examines Niko Kolodny's The Pecking Order and George Letsas's Status in Law and Morality. Kolodny's is an impressively ambitious treatment of social hierarchy as a philosophical problem. Yet he risks treating asymmetry as a pathology to be explained away or tempered. Letsas's achievement is to give this insight a legal form. Status is one way in which the law can acknowledge asymmetry without converting it into hierarchy.