Rawls, Habermas and Liberal Democratic Law

The theoretical undertakings of both Rawls and Habermas pivot on an aspiration to explain (and surely to promote through explanation) the Enlightenment ideal of reason reflected in the idea of liberal democracy. The thoughts developed in my book The Concept of Liberal Democratic Law (2020, CLDL hereafter) pivot on the same aspiration. What obviously distinguishes the theoretical undertaking in CLDL from those of Habermas and Rawls, is the greater emphasis in CLDL on the precariousness of this ideal of reason. This article first gives a short exposition of some of the main lines of thought developed in CLDL. It then moves on to an analysis of Rawls’ theory of political liberalism and Habermas’ discourse-theoretical explanation of the legitimacy of modern law through the prism of the key elements of CLDL highlighted in the first part of the article.