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Cardozo Law Review

Abstract

The justifications Jurgen Habermas gives for a system of rights bring together the central intentions of his theory of law. The chapter of his book which provides these justifications is devoted in part to developing the underlying tension between "facticity and validity" as the basic structure of law taking the extreme and, for that reason, illuminating aspect of the guarantee of liberty through coercion. It also elucidates the motives for reestablishing the centuries-old connection between legal theory and social theory in the context of the most topical social problems. Whereas all subsectors of contemporary society have been juridified on a scale inconceivable in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an insight which was once self-evident, at least until the days of Kant and Hegel, has been lost to our century, namely, that the conditions of a society can only be explained in the framework of a theory of law. Irrespective of the degree to which this is attributable to the current pressure to specialize in the scientific establishment, Habermas, in his theory of rights, at least provides reasons-rooted in the tensions and paradoxes of law itself-for the widespread disinterest, even on the part of critical social theory, in questions of law.

Keywords

Sovereignty, Government (General), Jurisprudence, Legal History, Democracy, Political Systems and Governments

Disciplines

Jurisprudence | Law | Legal History

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