Articles by Corey Brettschneider

 I would like to thank Alon for his comments on Chapter 7, especially given the importance of his own work on the topic of the chapter.  My conversations with him on this subject also have helped me to clarify my own thinking.  Nonetheless, there are some important points of disagreement.

Alon rejects the balancing approach when it comes to majoirtarian violations of many basic rights.  Although Alon leaves open the question of whether there might be such balancing in some cases, in his view, often when a majority violates basic rights that majority decision has no weight in terms of democratic legitimacy.  Alon gives us an example for instance of a plebiscite that would prohibit Corey Brettschneider from studying political science.  He argues that such laws not only violate rights but that there is no sense in which they are democratic.  He needs to make this last claim to show that such decisions have no weight or value on democratic grounds.

I am tempted to agree with Alon about this specific example.  But it seems to me that this example is a particular distinct kind of rights violation.  Namely, this law has the ad hoc character of the special laws that I argued in chapter 2 violated the most basic requirements of the rule of law in self-government.  Such a decision does not even result in the making of law, the most basic task of legislatures and plebiscites in a democracy.  Therefore such a policy has no weight because it does not even have the status of law.

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Thanks to Alex for his thoughtful and helpful post on this chapter.  His comments are especially helpful in thinking through how my account might respond to a kind of libertarian or “classically liberal” challenge. Specifically, Alex develops such a potential challenge from within the context of democratic contractualism. In particular, Alex wonders whether I am overly statist in my approach to welfare rights.  Citing Skocpol, he suggests that state involvement in welfare provision might weaken incentives of civil society groups to provide charity.  Why, he asks, should democratic contractualism rely on the state rather than charity to provide basic welfare rights?

I acknowledge the logical possibility that private markets might provide the kind of minimal welfare guarantees I defend in this chapter.  But absent any government involvement, I am skeptical that this logical possibility is likely.  More importantly, I have another worry about purely private provision of charity as a way of meeting these goals.  Although, Locke speaks of a right to “charity,” I worry that a system of purely private provision absent any state guarantees might undermine the notion that a guarantee of a minimum level of goods is in fact a right. Charity is often seen as a moral duty, but not a right required for political legitimacy.  On my account, however, it is important that these entitlements are, like the other democratic rights I defend,  necessary conditions for a legitimate state.  In sum, I acknowledge the logical possibility that these rights might be met be a market without a government safety net.  But I worry both that this is an unlikely empirical possibility and that such a system would weaken the claim that  a minimum provision of goods as a democratic right.

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Many thanks to Jim Wilson for an excellent discussion of Chapter V, “The Rights of the Punished.”  I will focus on two issues raised by his comments.  Both concern the relationship between my own theory and more traditional accounts of punishment, in particular concerns about whether punishment deters future crime as well as the possible place of my account of punishment within the retributivist tradition.

First, Jim perceptively elaborates on Hobbes’ account of punishment and asks whether it might be more compatible with my own arguments than I allow.  In particular, he asks whether a defense of capital punishment on general deterrence grounds might be brought within the scope of democratic contractualism.  As Jim makes clear, it is important for Hobbes that any account of capital punishment cannot be justified within the contractual relationship between the condemned and the state.  The ties of the social contract are severed in cases of capital punishment because the state’s sole aim is to protect life.  Capital punishment fails to meet that goal for the condemned and therefore any justification of it must sever the tie of that relationship.  The result is that for Hobbes capital punishment is justified for the state and resistance is justified for the condemned.  But this kind of justification is distinct from those that take place within social contract.  Read the rest of this entry »

Many thanks to Eric for another stellar set of insightful and challenging comments. Eric suggests that there is more potential for conflict between the substantive and procedural aspects of democracy than in less robust theories of self-government. I largely bracket this challenge for most of the book.  My first ambition is to establish an account of democratic justification to which those coerced by law are entitled and then to think about the basic rights that are required by it.  The first six chapters seek only to demonstrate that substantive rights are a part of the ideal of democracy.  But Eric’s question moves us in the inevitable direction from ideal to non-ideal theory.  Ideally any democratic procedure would affirm substantive democratic rights and there is a loss to the democratic ideal when they do not.  But as Eric points out actual democratic procedures which are themselves justifiable on the grounds of democratic contracutalism might not guarantee democratic rights.  He asks, can the conflict between democratic procedure and democratic substance be resolved by democratic contractualism?  The question seeks to reframe our earlier discussion about the tension between substantive and procedural aspects of democracy with reference to democratic contracualism, the framework I present for applying the core values to rights controversies.   Read the rest of this entry »

Many thanks to Anna for another very careful summary and an important set of questions.  In Chapter One and our discussion about it I emphasized why the value theory forces proceduralists to make a choice: Either they can acknowledge that there are values and outcomes that constrain procedures or they must give up on the idea that there are democratic rights that cannot be jettisoned.  It strikes me that Habermas tries to avoid this dilemma in his repeated insistence that his is a procedural account of democracy at the same time that he proclaims the importance of rights of addressees. Anna suggests that Habermas’ notion that “legal form” and the “discourse principle” are co-original might suggest that he is close to my own view that democratic procedures are at times constrained by some democratic outcomes.  On such a reading Habermas would have to give up on procedure as the normative grounding of democracy.  I think that this is likely the best reconstructed reading of Habermas, but it is a concession that many Habermasians do not want to make. On such a reading, procedure has a role in but it cannot serve as the fundamental normative grounding of a theory of democracy. Charles Larmore’s piece “The Foundations of Modern Democracy: Reflections on Jurgen Habermas,” is on point here and suggestive of why Habermas himself tries to resist such a move. I would be interested in hearing from others whether they read Habermas as endorsing something like the value theory or whether he might go the kind of route that Jordon Dodd was suggesting in our discussion of the previous chapter.

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I would like to thank Micah and Eric for organizing this group.  I would also like to thank Micah for his very careful and insightful summary of Chapter One, “The Value Theory of Democracy.”  I’ll take his second question first.  Micah is right to say that the value theory rejects a sharp distinction between democracy and liberal rights but that it relocates a tension between democratic procedures and substantive rights within the ideal of democracy.  The value theory does not resolve the tension between democracy and substantive rights in the particular sense that it gives neither an absolute weight to either democratic rights or democratic procedure.  Ideally, on my view, democratic procedures will affirm democratic outcomes.  But non-ideal circumstances will arise where democratic procedures violate democratic rights.  I examine such non- ideal cases in chapter seven, which Alon will comment on.  I argue there in favor of a balancing approach between democratic substantive rights and democratic procedures when these non-ideal circumstances arise.

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