Constitutional goods

New York: Oxford University Press (2004)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This book aims to distil the essentials of liberal constitutionalism from the jurisprudence and practice of contemporary liberal-democratic states. Most constitutional theorists have despaired of a liberal consensus on the fundamental goals of constitutional order. Instead they have contented themselves either with agreement on lower-level principles on which those who disagree on fundamentals may coincidentally converge, or, alternatively with a process for translating fundamental disgreement into acceptable laws. Alan Brudner suggests a conception of fundamental justice that liberals of competing philosophic schools may accept as fulfilling their own basic commitments. He argues that the model liberal-democratic constitution is best understood as a unity of three constitutional frameworks: libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian. Each of these has a particular conception of public reason. Brudner criticizes each of these frameworks insofar as its organizing conception claims to be fundamental, and moves forward to suggest an Hegelian conception of public reason within which each framework is contained as a constituent element of a whole. When viewed in this light, the liberal constitution embodies a surprising synthesis. It reconciles a commitment to individual liberty and freedom of conscience with the perfectionist idea that the state ought to cultivate a type of personality whose fundamental ends are the goods essential to dignity. Such a reconciliation, the author suggests, may attract competing liberalisms to a consensus on an inclusive conception of public reason under which political authority is validated for those who share a confidence in the individual's inviolable worth.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
4 (#1,426,245)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

The Right to be Presumed Innocent.Hamish Stewart - 2014 - Criminal Law and Philosophy 8 (2):407-420.
¿Fue auschwitz legal? Legalidad, exterminio Y positivisimo jurídico.Antonio Peña Freire - 2016 - Isonomía. Revista de Teoría y Filosofía Del Derecho 45:11-46.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references