Habermas's Sociological and Normative Theory of Law and Democracy: A Reply to Wirts, Flynn, and Zurn

Authors

Hugh Baxter, Boston Univeristy School of LawFollow

Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-2014

ISSN

0191-4537

Publisher

Sage Journals

Language

en-US

Abstract

In "Between Facts and Norms" (1996) Habermas presents the more straightforward normative discourse theory of law and democracy, in terms of contemporary legal orders, and then examines, in terms of social theory, whether the theory is plausible, given the complex nature of today’s conditions. The following article focuses in particular on Habermas’ social theory. It is critical of Habermas’ idea of ‘the lifeworld’ and discusses whether the circulation-of-power model might be mapped onto the system – lifeworld model.

Recommended Citation

Hugh Baxter, Habermas's Sociological and Normative Theory of Law and Democracy: A Reply to Wirts, Flynn, and Zurn , in 40 Philosophy and Social Criticism 225 (2014).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/141