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(How) Can Law be Legitimated? Habermas, Rawls, Dworkin

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Norms, Values, and Society

Part of the book series: Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook ((VCIY,volume 2))

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Abstract

For Habermas, contrary to what the legal positivists and system theorists believe, law requires legitimation (and thus is dependent on the discourse of morality) in post-traditional societies too, even if no natural-law metaphysics satisfies that desideratum. Habermas is aware that neither the appeal to a classical “philosophy of subjectivity” nor a notion of “de-limited communication” is capable of supplying the necessary legitimation. In his book Faktizität und Geltung 1, it is this basic dilemma that constitutes the problem to which a “discourse theory of law” seeks the answer.

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Notes

  1. Jürgen Habermas: Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1992. (All citations translated by L. N.)

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  2. Ibid., p.56.

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  3. Ibid.

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  4. Ibid.

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  5. Ibid.

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  6. Ibid., p.108.

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  7. Ibid., pp.57f.

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  8. Ibid., pp.59f.

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  9. Ibid., p.250.

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  10. John Rawls: A Theory of Justice, Harvard: Harvard University Press 1971.

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  11. Ibid., p.94.

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  12. Ibid., p.20.

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  13. Ibid., p.51.

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  14. Ibid., p.256.

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  15. Ernst Tugendhat: “Bemerkungen zu einigen methodischen Aspekten von Rawls’ `Eine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit”, in: Probleme der Ethik, Stuttgart: Reclam 1984, p.16.

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  16. John Rawls: A Theory of Justice, op.cit., p.22.

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  17. As, for example, specified in John Rawls: A Theory of Justice, op.cit., p.256.

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  18. Immanuel Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, New York: Harper and Row 1956, p.96.

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  19. Otfried Höffe: “Kritische Einführung in Rawls’s Theorie der Gerechtigkeit”, in: Ethik und Politik, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1979, p.71.

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  20. Ibid., section V, “Klugheitswahl oder Vernunftwahl”, pp.185–189.

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  21. Ernst Tugendhat: “Bemerkungen zu einigen methodischenAspekten von Rawls’ `Eine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit’”, op.cit., p.32.

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  22. Ibid.

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  23. John Rawls: “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus”, in: Political Liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press 1993, pp.133–172.

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  24. Ibid., p.145.

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  25. Ibid., p.134.

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  26. John Rawls: “The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus”, in: New York University Law Review, 4, 2, 1989, pp.235–238.

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  27. Jürgen Habermas: Faktizität und Geltung, op.cit., p.79.

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  28. Ibid., p.86.

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  29. Ibid.

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  30. Richard Rorty: “Der Vorrang der Demokratie vor der Philosophie” (German version of the unpublished typescript: The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy), in: Solidarität oder Objektivität,Stuttgart: Reclam 1987, esp. pp.90–92.

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  31. Jürgen Habermas: Faktizität und Geltung, op.cit., p.86.

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  32. Ronald Dworkin: “Foundations of Liberal Equality”, in: The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. VIII, 1990, p.2.

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  33. Ibid., p.2.

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  34. Ibid., p.17.

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  35. Jürgen Habermas: Faktizität und Geltung, op.cit., p.87.

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  36. Jürgen Habermas: “Vom pragmatischen, ethischen und moralischen Gebrauch der Vernunft”, in: Erläuterungen zur Diskursethik, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1991,p.117.

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  37. Ibid., p.117.

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  38. Ibid., p.118.

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  39. Ibid.

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  40. Ibid.

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  41. Ibid.

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  42. See Ludwig Nagl: “Die Selbstzerstörung der Hegelschen `Dialektik der Sittlichkeit’: Depotenzierung der Autonomie zur `Formalität des Sollen’”, in: Gesellschaft und Autonomie. Historisch-systematische Studien zur Entwicklung der Sozialtheorie von Hegel bis Habermas, Vienna: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften 1983, pp.34–51.

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  43. G.W.F. Hegel: Philosophy of Right, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1952, paragraph 139.

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  44. Ibid., paragraphs 137, 144, 151, 265.

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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Nagl, L. (1994). (How) Can Law be Legitimated? Habermas, Rawls, Dworkin. In: Pauer-Studer, H. (eds) Norms, Values, and Society. Vienna Circle Institute Yearbook, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2454-8_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2454-8_10

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  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4458-7

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