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The Dialectic of Law and the Modern Legal Form

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Emancipation, Democracy and the Modern Critique of Law

Part of the book series: International Political Theory ((IPoT))

Abstract

This chapter discusses the dialectic of law and the modern legal form. The dialectic of law, important in the tradition of the modern critique of law, entails that law is both a condition for emancipation and domination. Habermas’ analysis of the dilemmatic structure of welfare state law in The Theory of Communicative Action addresses this dialectic in ways that he does not in Between Facts and Norms. In the latter work, Habermas instead discusses the dilemma of welfare state law at the background of the dialectic of legal and factual equality. I discuss the difference between this understanding and the dialectic of law.

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  1. Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

    Mikael Spång

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Spång, M. (2018). The Dialectic of Law and the Modern Legal Form. In: Emancipation, Democracy and the Modern Critique of Law. International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62890-5_2

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