Huston
Fakultäten » Philosophische Fakultät » Philosophisches Seminar » Allgemein » Prof. Dr. Urs Marti » Huston
Completed research project
| Title / Titel | Law as Pluralism: Negotiating Legislation under Conditions of Conflicting Metaphysical Commitments | ||
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| Abstract (PDF, 14 KB) | |||
| Summary / Zusammenfassung | Law as pluralism denotes law arising and applied under conditions of conflicting metaphysical commitments; these metaphysical commitments may be either descriptive or normative, i.e. they may purport to state facts about the world or they may aim to constrain human behavior. Under the conception of law as pluralism put forward here, the law should accord prima facie equal validity to all metaphysical commitments held by members of a pluralistic society, regardless of the source of such commitments – any deviation from this conception of law as pluralism must be justified. Under the corollary but subsidiary regulative ideal of law as pluralism, legislative rules should prima facie only bind those who hold normative metaphysical commitments that do not conflict with those rules – any deviation from this regulative ideal must in turn be justified in terms of the conception of law as pluralism. This has consequences for the negotiation of legislation: according to the justificatory constraint of law as pluralism, giving disputed descriptive metaphysical commitments as reasons for endorsing a given legislative rule is compatible with the regulative ideal of law as pluralism, while giving disputed normative metaphysical commitments as reasons for endorsing a given legislative rule is not. Using the device of recursive pluralism, legislation can be negotiated at descending legislative levels with the goal of achieving loose consensus, according to which the legislative rules adopted do justice to all the various descriptive metaphysical commitments held at a given level, even where those commitments are mutually incompatible. Where loose consensus cannot be achieved, legislation can be made explicit by giving reasons why a given legislative rule should apply at a given legislative level despite the inability to achieve loose consensus at that level, thereby justifying the deviation from the conception of law as pluralism. Using these tools of legislative negotiation, law as pluralism facilitates the undertaking of joint legislative projects even where mutual understanding is not achievable. | ||
| Keywords / Suchbegriffe | legal philosophy, legislation, legislative discourse, legisprudence, pluralism, constitutional theory, politics and religion, public justification, public reason | ||
| Project leadership and contacts / Projektleitung und Kontakte |
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| Funding source(s) / Unterstützt durch |
No project-specific funding doctoral dissertation |
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| Duration of Project / Projektdauer | Sep 2007 to Jun 2011 |