Habermas on law and democracy : critical exchanges /

This reader consists of series of critical essays on Habermas's Between Facts and Norms (CH, Jan 97). In that book, Habermas advanced a "reconstructive jurisprudence concerned with the relationship between law and justice, on the one hand, and between democratic theory and rights-theory on the other hand. In this volume, Habermas advances a "proceduralist account" of law as simultaneously self-imposed and binding. This proceduralist account is one of three paradigms that Habermas considers. The first is the "liberal-bourgeois" paradigm, which advances a formalistic conception of law and distributive equality. The second--the social welfare paradigm--is concerned largely with material equality. The third paradigm--the proceduralist--claims to satisfy the demands of both legal and factual equality. The remaining essays consist of responses to Habermas by scholars such as Michael Rosenfeld and Andrew Arato (also the editors of this volume), Frank Michelman, and Ulrich Preuss, among others. The responses are of uniformly high quality. The book ends with a reply by Habermas to his critics. In sum, this is essential reading for students and critics of Habermas alike. Graduate students and faculty. J. E. Finn; Wesleyan University