A Pluralist Theory Of Constitutional Justice

In recent years, liberal constitutionalism has come under sharp attack. Globalization has caused huge disparities in wealth, identity-based alienation triggered by mass migration, and accompanying erosions of democracy. Liberal populists have also adapted the framework of liberal institutionalism, masking their aim to subvert its core values. These developments bring the links between justice and the constitution to the fore, particularly concerning distributive justice in its three dimensions of redistribution, recognition, and representation. A Pluralist Theory of Constitutional Justice provides a systematic account of the central role of distributive justice in the normative legitimation of liberal constitutions. The requirements of distributive justice are highly contested, and constitutions are susceptible to influencing those they govern. By drawing on Rawls' insight that distributive justice calls for "constitutional essentials", Rosenfeld advances the thesis that liberal constitutions must incorporate certain "justice essentials". This book is divided into three sections. Part one examines the current legal, economic, political and ideological developments that pose challenges to the normative viability of liberal constitutionalism. Part two offers a rereading of philosophical and jurisprudential literature that sheds crucial light on the relationship between constitution and justice. Finally, part three makes a case for using a thoroughly pluralistic approach in the quest for a constitution's justice essentials.

Rejecting current arguments that international law should be 'constitutionalized', this book advances an alternative, pluralist vision of postnational legal orders. It analyses the promise and problems of pluralism in theory and in current practice - focusing on the European human rights regime, the European Union, and global governance in the UN.

We live in a pluralist world of multi-level law and governance. More than ever before multiple legal systems and governing authorities at different levels - sub-state, state, supranational, international - are recognized as applying to, and claiming authority over, the affairs of the same sets of individuals and institutions. Yet our constitutional theories fail to adequately capture this pluralist state of affairs. This book examines some of the key conceptual and theoretical puzzles which the contemporary state of multilevel pluralism poses for our constitutional theories. It offers fresh perspectives on these questions by addressing the pluralism of norms and authorities from the viewpoint of legality and legitimacy respectively, proposing novel solutions for pluralizing constitutional theory in the light of contemporary multilevel governance. Our turbulent times are on a steady trajectory of ever-more pluralism of law and governance to tackle the defining social and political problems of our age including populism, pandemic, and climate change and this book provides an essential intervention in debates on how to pluralize constitutional theory to better understand and, perhaps more importantly, legitimize the tools to address these increasingly shared problems.

Pluralism proceeds from the observation that many associations in liberal democracies claim to possess, and attempt to exercise, a measure of legitimate authority over their members. They assert that this authority does not derive from the magnanimity of a liberal and tolerant state but is grounded, rather, on the common practices and aspirations of those individuals who choose to take part in a common endeavor. As an account of the authority of associations, pluralism is distinct from other attempts to accommodate groups like multiculturalism, subsidiarity, corporatism, and associational democracy. It is consistent with the explanation of legal authority proposed by contemporary legal positivists, and recommends that the formal normative systems of highly organized groups be accorded the status of fully legal norms when they encounter the laws of the state. In this book, Muniz-Fraticelli argues that political pluralism is a convincing political tradition that makes distinctive and radical claims regarding the sources of political authority and the relationship between associations and the state. Drawing on the intellectual tradition of the British political pluralists, as well as recent developments in legal philosophy and social ontology, the book argues that political pluralism makes distinctive and radical claims regarding the sources of political authority and the relationship between associations and the state.

The Cold War ideological battle with universal aspirations has given way to a clash of cultures as the world concurrently moves toward globalization of economies and communications and balkanization through a clash of ethnic and cultural identities. Traditional liberal theory has confronted daunting challenges in coping with these changes and with recent developments such as the spread of postmodern thought, religious fundamentalism and global terrorism. This book argues that a political and legal philosophy based on pluralism is best suited to confront the problems of the twenty-first century. Pointing out that monist theories such as liberalism have become inadequate and that relativism is dangerous, the book makes the case for pluralism from the standpoint of both theory and its applications. The book engages with thinkers, such as Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Rawls, Berlin, Dworkin, Habermas and Derrida and with several subjects that are at the center of current controversies.

The book gathers the general report and the national reports presented at the XXth General Congress of the IACL, in Fukuoka (Japan), on the topic “Debating legal pluralism and constitutionalism: new trajectories for legal theory in the global age”. Discussing the major contemporary changes occurring in and problems faced by domestic legal systems in the global age, the book describes how and to what extent these trends affect domestic legal orderings and practices, and challenges the traditional theoretical lenses that are offered to tackle them: constitutionalism and pluralism. Combining comparative law and comparative legal doctrine, and drawing on the national contributions, the general report concludes that most of the classic tools offered by legal doctrine are not appropriate to address most of today’s practical and theoretical global legal challenges, and as such, the book also offers new intellectual tools for the global age.

This book offers a new account of modern European constitutionalism. It uses the Irish constitutional order to demonstrate that, right across the European Union, the national constitution can no longer be understood on its own, in isolation from the EU legal order or from the European Convention on Human Rights. The constitution is instead triangular, with these three legal orders forming the points of a triangle, and the relationship and interactions between them forming the triangle's sides. It takes as its starting point the theory of constitutional pluralism, which suggests that overlapping constitutional orders are not necessarily arranged 'on top of' each other, but that they may be arranged heterarchically or flatly, without a hierarchy of superior and subordinate constitutions. However, it departs from conventional accounts of this theory by emphasising that we must still pay close attention to jurisdictional specificity in order to understand the norms that regulate pluralist constitutions. It shows, through application of the theory to case studies, that any attempt to extract universal principles from the jurisdictionally contingent interactions between specific legal orders is fraught with difficulty. The book is an important contribution to constitutional theory in general, and constitutional pluralism in particular, and will be of great interest to scholars in the field.