(How) can law be legitimated?

Habermas, Rawls, Dworkin

Ludwig Nagl

pp. 131-142

in: Herlinde Pauer Studer (ed), Norms, values, and society, Berlin, Springer, 1994

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.

Cited authors

Habermas Jürgen

Rawls John