Mark Blitz's Duty Bound is a penetrating treatment of responsibility. Unlike the work of many political theorists, Blitz's work transcends textual interpretation toward the realm of philosophy as such. Responsibility is the phenomenon, and Blitz is the rigorous scientist.

Araujo and Lucal have written a lucid and scholarly history of papal diplomacy from the medieval period to the end of the League of Nations as the first volume in their projected two-part study. Both Jesuits have served on the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations and so have developed the ability to read the documents with a critical eye as they parse the meaning of what is sometimes fairly vague diplomatic language that, in reality, is framing an agenda. In the nine chapters of this book, the reader will be immersed into the ongoing attempts of the Holy See to fulfill the church's commitment to maximize the dignity of each person through the diplomacy that it has conducted since the Middle Ages. In the course of their analysis, the authors probe how the diplomats of the Holy See have developed the appropriate conditions that have made possible meaningful negotiations, how they have tried to insert the social teachings of the Catholic Church into each diplomatic agenda, and how they have tried to safeguard the exercise of each person's religious conscience.

Bettina Koch has written an important book that challenges the traditional typologies of medieval versus modern political thought. She provides extended comparisons of Marsilius of Padua, Johannes Althusius, and Thomas Hobbes on a number of key topics and shows that their differences point to a common, central concern for medieval Christendom: the relationship of temporal and spiritual powers, the so-called Gelasian two swords. In arguing for continuity between medieval and modern thought (where Marsilius is ostensibly medieval, Hobbes is modern, and Althusius is often seen as a hybrid), she follows the path laid out by scholars including Brian Tierney, James H. Burns, J. G. A. Pocock, Antony Black, and Cary Nederman. However, she draws on an eclectic range of thinkers, including Eric Voegelin, Michael Oakeshott, Norbert Elias, Hans Blumenberg, and Jacob Taubes to articulate both the continuity and discontinuity between medieval and modern thought. The result, as indicated by her title, is that the categories of “medieval” and “modern” cannot be completely useful except as a sort of shorthand, because medieval elements can be found in modern thought and vice versa. There is continuity but also discontinuity, and her book provides a subtle analysis of how both work.