Basic rights and disagreement: is persistent disagreement about basic rights a reason to specify rights by democratic procedures?

Reasonable disagreement about rights is commonly thought to challenge the legitimacy of political liberalism and judicial review. If citizens persistently and reasonably disagree about basic rights, how can any state adopt laws that all citizens can reasonably accept? Why can a handful of judges impose their beliefs about rights on other citizens? I develop a Kantian theory of legitimacy and public reason that responds to these common challenges. Conscientious people will inevitably disagree about their basic rights, because those rights involve vague or contested concepts. In the face of such disagreement, individuals can interact rightfully only if they accept a third-party authority to specify the positive content of rights through general laws. Accordingly, individuals are morally obligated to adopt and support some authority capable of adopting and enforcing general laws that specify their rights. However, citizens may accept the choices of a purported authority only if it remains accountable to citizens in the right way. A legitimate state need not let citizens define rights or adopt definitions that they endorse, even indirectly. Rather, a legitimate state adopts institutions that empowers citizens to challenge its definitions of rights and responds to those challenges in reasons citizens “appreciate,” even if they do not and will never endorse those reasons. Using possible worlds semantics, I disambiguate the idea of “reasons that all can accept” and defend “appreciation” as the foundation of public reason. On this theory, a moderate form of judicial review can enhance a state’s political legitimacy. Unlike other forms of political accountability such as elections, judicial review gives individual citizens the right to demand the state justify its decisions and enables the state as a collective entity to articulate a justification.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Strauss, Gregg

Contributors dc:contributor

• Solum, Lawrence
• Moore, Michael
• Sussman, David
• Varden, Helga

• political philosophy
• legitimacy
• public reason
• disagreement
• judicial review
• fundamental rights
• basic rights
• Rawls

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2013 Gregg Strauss

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/44339

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/44339