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Fairness, Consensus, and the Justification of the Ideal Liberal Constitution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2015

Philip Cook
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Extract

In Constitutional Goods, Alan Brudner seeks to articulate a novel conception of justice that will inform the content of the ideal liberal constitution. The content and justification of this conception ofjustice are the topics of this paper. The content of this novel conception ofjustice is constituted by what Brudner describes as an inclusive conception of liberalism, and its justification is grounded on an account of public reason that is presented in opposition to that of John Rawls. I argue that we should reject both the content and justification of Brudner’s conception ofjustice. Brudner is unable to construct an inclusive conception of liberalism from elements of libertarianism, egalitarianism, and communitarianism, and his account of public reason lacks the properties of fairness and reciprocity that differentiate a reasonable agreement from a modus vivendi. This paper therefore defends a Rawlsian political conception ofjustice and justification from Brudner’s criticisms and proposed alternatives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 165 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 2009

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References

Thanks to participants at the LSE Forum in Legal and Political Theory Symposium for comments and contributions on an earlier draft, and in particular to Alan Brudner for his generous and comprehensive contributions at the symposium.

1. Brudner, Alan, Constitutional Goods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).Google Scholar

2. Ibid. at 13-15.

3. Ibid. at viii-ix.

4. Brudner points to the examples of the constitutions of Canada, South Africa, and Germany, ibid. at 21.

5. See Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Rawls, John, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (1997) 64 U. Chicago L. Rev. 765 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rawls, John, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

6. A political conception of justice is a moral conception of justice that applies to the fundamental economic, democratic, and legal institutions of society that comprise the basic structure.

7. Alan Brudner, supra note 1 at 19.

8. Ibid. at 431.

9. Brudner has in mind a luck egalitarian variant of egalitarianism. See Brudner, supra note 1 at 254-76.

10. Ibid. at 22.

11. Dworkin, Ronald, ‘What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources’ (1981) 10 Phil. & Pub. Affairs at 283.Google Scholar

12. For example, see Anderson, Elizabeth ‘What is the Point of Equality?’ (1999) 109 Ethics 287 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Frankfurt, Harry ‘Equality as a Moral Ideal’ (1987) 98 Ethics 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. For example, Nagel, Thomas, Equality and Priority (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

14. Dworkin, Ronald, Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)Google Scholar and Cohen, G. A., If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

15. Temkin, Larry, Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar and Temkin, Larry, ‘Harmful Goods, Harmless Bads’ in Frey, R.G. & Morris, Christopher W, eds., Value, Welfare, and Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

16. Steiner, Hillel, An Essay on Rights (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).Google Scholar

17. Vallentyne, Peter, ‘Libertarianism and the State’ (2007) 24 Soc. Phil. & Pol’y 187.Google Scholar

18. Otsuka, Michael, Libertarianism without Inequality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Kukathas, Chandran, The Liberal Archipelago (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Cited in Brudner, supra note 1 at 10.

21. John Rawls, ‘The Independence of Moral Theory’ (1974-1975) 48 Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association at 5.

22. Brudner, supra note 1 at 183-84.

23. Reasonable agreement also involves a commitment to an agreement on the basis of reasons and values that are authoritative to all. We will consider this point in the next section.

24. Gaus, Gerald, Justificatory Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) at 152 Google Scholar, see also Swartzman, Micah, ‘The Completeness of Public Reason’ (2004) 3 Pol., Phil. & Econ. 191 CrossRefGoogle Scholar for employment of this distinction in defence of public reason.

25. Gaus, supra note 24 at 153.

26. Rawls, Political Liberalism, supra note 5 at 59.

27. Brudner, supra note 1 at 432.

28. Ibid. at 431.

29. Ibid. at 432.

30. Thanks to Conrad Heilmann for discussion on this point.

31. See Rawls, Political Liberalism, supra note 5 at 16-17.

32. Rawls says that reasonableness has two aspects ‘… the willingness to propose fair terms of cooperation and to abide by them provided others do. The second basic aspect … is the willingness to recognize the burdens of judgment and to accept their consequences for the use of public reason in directing the legitimate exercise of political power in a constitutional regime.’ Ibid. at 54. Having considered the burdens of judgment argument, we are now considering the fairness argument.

33. Ibid. at 70.

34. Darwall, Stephen, The Second-Person Standpoint (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

35. Ibid. at 8.

36. Rawls, Political Liberalism, supra note 5 at 50 where the general good would be the third-person point of view.

37. Ibid. at 53-54.