Foreword (2011)
Authors
Abstract
In constitutional democracies, representatives having a seat on a legislature are expected to put forward, discuss and weigh the reasons for which they pass laws. Parliamentary debates should thus convey a public justification for lawmaking, so that interested citizens can monitor the soundness of legislative arguments and decisions. If such a claim is to be taken seriously, and not as a pure ideological delusion, argumentation and legislation do necessarily belong together: making a law includes arguing about it. However, deliberations in parliament are very seldom conceived of as a mode of reasoning aimed at justification or addressed as a pattern of rationality (reasonableness), correctness or legitimacy of laws. Sceptical and realistic approaches to legislation, which remain dominant both in political theory and jurisprudence-the same goes for public opinion and average citizens-, do not seem to leave much room for hopes of any rational discussion underlying statutes in fact. For sure, there may be plenty of instances of failed justification in parliamentary lawmaking practices. Yet this cannot simply lead us to give up the expectation that laws, as authoritative decisions, must be properly discussed by those entrusted to make them-the normative core of modern legal cultures would then radically change. We are not better off assuming the inability of the legislatures to justify their outcomes or bowing to an allegedly inescapable arbitrariness of politics-few advances are likely to be achieved that way. What we could need, rather, is a closer examination and better understanding of lawmaking deliberations as source of justification of laws, thereby clearing the ground for a theory of legislative argument being part of a comprehensive theory of legislation. This special issue is an attempt to contribute to that project.
Bibliographic entry
Gigerenzer, G. (2011). Foreword. In H. M. Enzensberger, Fatal numbers: Why count on chance (Subway Line No. 3) (pp. 7-9). New York: Upper West Side Philosophers.
Miscellaneous
| Publication year | 2011 | |
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| Document type: | In book | |
| Publication status: | Published | |
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