The Counterfactual Yardstick

The book discusses a democratic legitimation for modern law. Debates on Europeanisation are taken into account. Ronald Dworkin's, Neil MacCormick's and Jürgen Habermas's standpoints on relations between the law and the public sphere are investigated. Concepts of self-reflexive polity, self-constitutionalisation, constitutional patriotism are analysed.

The chief concern of this book is to discuss a democratic legitimation for modern law. Investigation is therefore steered towards current debates on processes of Europeanisation and the issue of self-constitutionalisation of a democratic polity. This turns out to be a complex concept referring to the threefold constitutionalisation: legal, institutional and horizontal, and hence to processes of evolutionary constitution making as well as institutional and societal constitutionalisation. Developing democratic legitimation in post-conventional terms rests on the presumption of increasing the processes of incrementally rationalising lifeworlds and unveils the role of the practical power of judgement transferred from the concept of a (monological) subject to the (dialogical-discursive) public spheres.

Autorentext

Karolina M. Cern, PhD, Chair of Ethics at the Department of Philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz University (Poland); author of The Conception of Time by the Early Heidegger (2007), co-author of Ethos in Public Life (2008, repr.2011); co-editor of eight volumes and author of numerous articles in practical philosophy.

Inhalt

Contents: Democratic legitimation Processes of Europeanisation CJEU Self-reflexive polity Self-constitutionalisation Constitutional patriotism Public sphere Normativity, values and norms Ronald Dworkin Neil MacCormick Jürgen Habermas Contractarianism Counterfactual yardstick Political morality Deontology.