Michael Joseph Sandel (; born 1953) is an American political philosopher and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government Theory at Harvard University Law School, where his course Justice was the university's first course to be made freely available online and on television. It has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, including in China, where Sandel was named the "most influential foreign figure of the year" 2011 ("China Newsweek"). He is also known for his critique of John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice" in his first book, "Liberalism and the Limits of Justice" (1982).