  We study the evidence for and possible origins of parity doubling among the
baryons. First we explore the experimental evidence, finding a significant
signal for parity doubling in the non-strange baryons, but little evidence
among strange baryons. Next we discuss potential explanations for this
phenomenon. Possibilities include suppression of the violation of the flavor
singlet axial symmetry ($U(1)_{A}$) of QCD, which is broken by the triangle
anomaly and by quark masses. A conventional Wigner-Weyl realization of the
$SU(2)_{L}\times SU(2)_{R}$ chiral symmetry would also result in parity
doubling. However this requires the suppression of families of \emph{chirally
invariant} operators by some other dynamical mechanism. In this scenario the
parity doubled states should decouple from pions. We discuss other explanations
including connections to chiral invariant short distance physics motivated by
large $N_{c}$ arguments as suggested by Shifman and others, and intrinsic
deformation of relatively rigid highly excited hadrons, leading to parity
doubling on the leading Regge trajectory. Finally we review the spectroscopic
consequences of chiral symmetry using a formalism introduced by Weinberg, and
use it to describe two baryons of opposite parity.
