What Conservatives Value: Reply to Blackburn

In reply to Dean Blackburn’s ‘In the Shadows’, it is argued that the situated nature of the conservative ideology entails that its adherents cannot have a substantive set of shared values, but that their values will typically be a cultural inheritance. The epistemological element of conservatism may not be the most electorally salient in any concrete context, but has strategic value as the common element of conservatism most likely to support a public reason defence.

Religion, Religions and J.Rawls’ Political Project

The essay explores the relationship between religion and Rawls from the perspective of some issues that are central to his political project: political autonomy, public reason and the implications of the fact of pluralism for the development of the idea of decent peoples. Religion has a dual dimension in political liberalism, plural and singular. The problem of the liberal political transition is to allow these two dimensions to coexist harmoniously within the liberal political project.

Ungureanu, Camil and Monti, Paolo (2018). Contemporary Political Philosophy and Religion: between Public Reason and Pluralism

Ungureanu, Camil and Monti, Paolo (2018)Contemporary Political Philosophy and Religion: between Public Reason and PluralismNew York: Routledge, 349 p.ISBN 9780415552196

Religious Reasoning in the Liberal Public from the Second-Personal Perspective

There is a constant dissent between exclusivist public reason liberals and their inclusivist religious critics concerning the question whether religious arguments can figure into the public justification of state action. Firstly, I claim that the stability of this dissent is best explained as a conflict between an exclusivist third-personal account of public justification which demands restraint, and an inclusivist first-personal account which rejects restraint. Secondly, I argue that both conceptions are deficient because they cannot accommodate the valid intuitions of their opponents. They either imply a violation of the integrity of religious citizens or they give room for cases where a religious majority can impose a political norm on a minority without having given this minority a reason to comply with the norm. Finally, I defend an inclusivist model of public reason liberalism which relies on a second-personal conception of public justification. I claim that this model breaks the impasse in favor of inclusivism because religious arguments can play a role in public justification, but they can never justify state action on their own in a plural society. Thus, the problematic cases that motivate exclusivism are excluded without having introduced a principle of restraint which violates the religious integrity of citizens.

Filozofia polityczna a racja stanu. Część 2

Reason of state understood as the reason for its existence and expressed by a synthesis of the normative as well as the political, including its normative and empirical, universal and particular, abstract and concrete dimensions requires a justification by political philosophy. Yet, in the output of the main body of Western political philosophy, including the Aristotelian, Marxist, and liberal traditions, the reason of state lacks any validation. In those traditions, there is no distinction between the elements to be found in all states and those present only in some of them. In fact, both in Aristotle and Marx, the normative in the conduct of all states sets the limits of the empirical which expresses their real behavior. The normative of general principles outlines the political of concrete states. The normative supervises the political and the political is to confirm the normative. Thus, in Aristotle and Marx, the political is to indicate the necessity of the normative, its power of influence and complex character. In turn, the modern as well as contemporary liberals, especially contractarians, completely deprive their normative argument of any empirical confirmation. Thus, they consciously and purposefully give it exclusively a normative dimension. Accordingly, the normative fully replaces the empirical which leads to the elimination of the political. In his concept of public reason, Rawls goes even further and considers the empirical identical with the normative, and consequently the political with the normative. For some of his followers, the irrevocable character of the connection between the normative and the empirical in the notion of public reason is to be guaranteed by elimination of the political. This is to be achieved by the abolition of the state itself and thus the deprivation of the idea of reason of state of any conceptual foundation. However, both in Montesquieu and Burke, there is a strong distinction between what characterizes all states and what distinguishes each of them. Such a distinction results from the difference between what is common to their subjects or citizens and the societies they create, and what distinguishes them from themselves and their societies. At the same time, Montesquieu’s liberalism and Burke’s conservatism offer an equilibrium of the normative and the political which in turn constitutes a doctrinal support for the concept of reason of state beyond the main traditions of western political philosophy.

Judicial Review of Legislation in the UK: Fundamental Common Law Principles as "Constitutional Principles" Limiting the Sovereignty of Parliament?

<p>The aim of this paper is to explore the role of judicial review of legislation in the UK from a legal constitutionalist’s point of view. After having introduced the reader to the origins of judicial review of legislation in general and the two theoretical models of constitutionalism, the UK’s system of constitutionalism will be analysed in particular. In this context, the process of “juridification” and “judicalisation” will be discussed in order to show that the British doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty - famously articulated by Dicey in 1885 - is currently under attack. The main focus of this research paper is on the theory of common law constitutionalism (CLC theory), according to which the common law is seen as constituting a higher order of law, a moral ideal and a superior form of public reason, and therefore the ultimate controlling factor of Parliament’s actions. On the basis of the academic theory, the judicial reception of this theory will be analysed with particular attention to the House of Lords’ decision in Jackson in 2005. It will be argued that the system of the common law constitutionalism in the UK is not very different from the system of legal constitutionalism: Firstly, fundamental principles embedded in the common law like the rule of law are similar to constitutional principles of codified supreme constitutions, providing for benchmarks of judicial review of legislation. Secondly, the requirement of exceptional circumstances for invalidating legislation in the CLC system corresponds to the idea of (strong) judicial self-restraint in legal constitutionalist systems.</p>

Judicial Review of Legislation in the UK: Fundamental Common Law Principles as "Constitutional Principles" Limiting the Sovereignty of Parliament?

<p>The aim of this paper is to explore the role of judicial review of legislation in the UK from a legal constitutionalist’s point of view. After having introduced the reader to the origins of judicial review of legislation in general and the two theoretical models of constitutionalism, the UK’s system of constitutionalism will be analysed in particular. In this context, the process of “juridification” and “judicalisation” will be discussed in order to show that the British doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty - famously articulated by Dicey in 1885 - is currently under attack. The main focus of this research paper is on the theory of common law constitutionalism (CLC theory), according to which the common law is seen as constituting a higher order of law, a moral ideal and a superior form of public reason, and therefore the ultimate controlling factor of Parliament’s actions. On the basis of the academic theory, the judicial reception of this theory will be analysed with particular attention to the House of Lords’ decision in Jackson in 2005. It will be argued that the system of the common law constitutionalism in the UK is not very different from the system of legal constitutionalism: Firstly, fundamental principles embedded in the common law like the rule of law are similar to constitutional principles of codified supreme constitutions, providing for benchmarks of judicial review of legislation. Secondly, the requirement of exceptional circumstances for invalidating legislation in the CLC system corresponds to the idea of (strong) judicial self-restraint in legal constitutionalist systems.</p>