The present edition of The Book of Fallacies is the first that follows Bentham's own structure for the work, and includes a great deal of material, both in terms of the fallacies themselves and the illustrative matter, that previous versions of the work have omitted. The fallacies that concerned Bentham were not logical errors of the sort identified by Aristotle, or commonplace misunderstandings of matters of fact, but arguments deployed in political debate, in particular in the British Parliament, in order to prevent reform. Bentham not only identified, described, and criticized the fallacious arguments in question, which were all characterized by their irrelevancy, but explained the sinister interests that led politicians to employ them and their supporters to accept them. By exposing these political fallacies, Bentham hoped to prevent their employment in future, and thereby to place political debate on its only proper ground, namely considerations drawn from the principle of utility.

Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence, written in 1780-2, is the continuation of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and thus part of the introduction to the projected penal code on which Bentham worked in the late 1770s and early 1780s. The work emerged from Bentham's attempt to distinguish between civil and penal law, which led him into an exposition of the nature and scope of an individual law and an analysis of such key legal terms as power, duty, right, property, contract, and conveyance. Bentham addresses the relationship between different 'aspects' of the legislator's will, such as command, prohibition, and permission, and in so doing develops a 'logic of the will' which anticipates modern deontic logic. He explains that the disposition of the people to obey constitutes the basis of political and legal power, and distinguishes between law addressed to the sovereign and law addressed to the people. Dealing with some of the most fundamental problems in jurisprudence and the theory of human action, Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence is a work of outstanding originality and seminal importance in the field of legal philosophy. The volume contains an Editorial Introduction which explains the provenance of the text, and the method of presentation. The text is fully annotated with textual and historical notes, and the volume is completed with detailed subject and name indices. This edition of Of the Limits of the Penal Branch of Jurisprudence supersedes Of Laws in General, edited by H.L.A. Hart and published by the Athlone Press in 1970, as a volume in The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham.

Bentham's writings for the French Revolution were dominated by the themes of rights, representation, and reform. In 'Nonsense upon Stilts' (hitherto known as 'Anarchical Fallacies'), the most devastating attack on the theory of natural rights ever written, he argued that natural rights provided an unsuitable basis for stable legal and political arrangements. In discussing the nature of representation he produced the earliest utilitarian justification of political equality and representative democracy, even recommending women's suffrage.