IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/copoec/v2y1991i3p251-281.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public justification and democratic adjudication

Author

Listed:
  • Gerald Gaus

Abstract

Contractualists seek to publicly justify moral principles, but it seems doubtful that a set of specific principles or policies can be definitively justified. In this sense, the contractualist project has an indeterminate result: the precise content of liberal morality is open to reasonable dispute. Liberal citizens thus find themselves disagreeing about the demands of liberal morality. They require, as Locke argued, an umpire to resolve their disputes. This paper analyzes what is required of such an umpire, and then employs a four-stage argument to show that constitutional representative democracy is the uniquely justified umpiring procedure for resolving these disputes. Democratic politics, on this view, is the continuation of ethical dispute by other means. Copyright George Mason University 1991

Suggested Citation

  • Gerald Gaus, 1991. "Public justification and democratic adjudication," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 251-281, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:2:y:1991:i:3:p:251-281
    DOI: 10.1007/BF02393132
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF02393132
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/BF02393132?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard E. Wagner, 2004. "Public Choice as an Academic Enterprise," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(1), pages 55-74, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Steffen Ganghof, 2013. "Does public reason require super-majoritarian democracy? Liberty, equality, and history in the justification of political institutions," Politics, Philosophy & Economics, , vol. 12(2), pages 179-196, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. William Niskanen, 1990. "Conditions affecting the survivial of constitutional rules," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 53-62, March.
    2. Etienne Farvaque & Frédéric Gannon, 2018. "Profiling giants: the networks and influence of Buchanan and Tullock," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 277-302, June.
    3. Richard Wagner, 2008. "Finding social dilemma: West of Babel, not east of Eden," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(1), pages 55-66, April.
    4. Anton Lowenberg & Ben Yu, 1992. "Efficient constitution formation and maintenance: The role of “exit”," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 51-72, December.
    5. Geoffrey Lea & Adam Martin, 2014. "From Vienna to Virginia: Exchange, rules, and social cooperation an introduction to the symposium," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 1-9, March.
    6. Jean-Michel Josselin & Alain Marciano, 2000. "Displacing your Principal. Two Historical Case Studies of Some Interest for the Constitutional Future of Europe," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 217-233, November.
    7. Giampaolo Garzarelli & Matthew Holian, 2014. "Parchment, guns, and the problem of governance," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 71-80, March.
    8. John Mbaku, 1995. "Preparing Africa for the twenty-first century: Lessons from constitutional economics," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 139-160, June.
    9. Boettke, Peter, 2011. "Teaching economics, appreciating spontaneous order, and economics as a public science," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 265-274.
    10. Ulrich Witt, 1992. "The emergence of a protective agency and the constitutional dilemma," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 255-266, March.
    11. James Dorn, 1991. "Madison's constitutional political economy: Principles for a liberal order," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 163-186, March.
    12. Charlotte Twight, 1992. "Constitutional renegotiation: Impediments to consensual revision," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 89-112, December.
    13. Gardner, B. Delworth, 1997. "The Political Economy Of Public Land Use," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 22(1), pages 1-18, July.
    14. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6urb9g3nsd9s9ai3tbjqnnd41g is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Richard Wagner, 2012. "The Calculus of Consent: a compass for my professional journey," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 393-396, September.
    16. Z. Spindler, 1990. "Constitutional design for a rent-seeking society: Voting rule choice," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 73-82, September.
    17. Etienne Farvaque & Frédéric Gannon, 2018. "Profiling giants," Post-Print hal-02078382, HAL.
    18. Marianne Johnson, 2018. "Rules versus authorities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 219-228, June.
    19. Richard Wagner, 2015. "Virginia political economy: a rational reconstruction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 163(1), pages 15-29, April.
    20. Anthony Evans, 2014. "A subjectivist’s solution to the limits of public choice," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 27(1), pages 23-44, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:copoec:v:2:y:1991:i:3:p:251-281. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.