Special Workshop Abstract

In this spirit, my essay will engage in an analysis of the foundations of the legitimacy of law in a pluralist society. Respect for disagreement and diversity are salient features of contemporary democracy. This makes the search for the legitimacy of laws that apply to all members of a political community a very demanding, if cardinal, task. I will argue that we can ill-afford to carry this most important debate within the limited repertoire of jurisprudential—stricto sensu—arguments about the authority of law or by employing arguments advanced by contemporary theorists of democracy. Most of these theories either pay lip service to pluralism and disagreement or are simply too narrowly focused to succeed in providing compelling accounts. I will frame the question of pluralism by relying on constitutional law and theory, social theory as well as political and legal thought and I will suggest that it is only by combining these fields that we begin to grasp the complexity of the issue at hand. I further analyse how much our intellectual landscape changes once we dispense with consensual theories of legitimacy.