Public Reason and Courts

Description

Public Reason and Courts is an interdisciplinary study of public reason and courts with contributions from leading scholars in legal theory, political philosophy and political science. The book's chapters demonstrate the breadth of ways in which public reason and public justification is currently seen as relevant for adjudicative reasoning and review practices, and includes critical assessments of different ways that the idea of public reason has been applied to courts. It shows that public reason is not just an abstract theoretical concept used by political philosophers, but an idea that spurs new perspectives and normative frameworks also for legal scholars and judges. In particular, the book demonstrates the potential, and the limitations, of the idea of public reason as a source of legitimacy for courts, in a context where many courts face political backlashes and crisis of trust.

Silje A. Langvatn is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Philosophy at The University of Bergen, Norway. She has previously held positions as Postdoctoral Fellow at PluriCourts, University of Oslo, Law & Philosophy Fellow at Yale Law School (2016), and Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Harvard Government Department (2009). Mattias Kumm is Inge Rennert Professor of Law, NYU School of Law and Research Professor for Global Public Law at WZB Social Science Research Center, Berlin. He works on basic issues of constitutional, European and international law as well as the philosophy of law. Beyond his current affiliations Kumm held professorial appointments among others at Harvard, Yale and the EUI. He is a founding Editor of Global Constitutionalism (CUP) and Jus Cogens (Springer). Wojciech Sadurski has previously held a professorship at the European University Institute, Florence, where he served as head of department of law in (2003-6). He taught at New York University School of Law, Yale Law School, Fordham Law School in New York and was Chair of the Academic Advisory Board of the Community of Democracies. He has written extensively on the philosophy of law, political philosophy, and comparative constitutional law.