EXC 212 A03 - Justification of Norms in the Pluralistic State

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Description

The grounding of norms in the liberal constitutional state is tied up with the requirement of public justification. The legitimate, ideologically neutral legislator, who is required to treat his citizens with equal concern and respect (Ronald Dworkin), has to limit himself to reason that in principle could be explained to anyone in a discourse. Thus motifs based upon particular ideas of the good – for example of a religious kind – are barred as resources for grounding legal norms, and this is also fundamentally the case even when these religious contents are translated into profane semantics. The unique non-substitutable ability of the ethically neutral, secular state to stabilise a society of free and equal citizens – separated by incompatible religious, philosophical, and moral basic values – within a common constitutional system (John Rawls) is based on this model of order, which was grounded upon the separation of legal theory from theology established at the latest in the seventeenth century.