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- Title
A Contractualist Defense of Democratic Authority.
- Authors
Lefkowitz, David
- Abstract
This paper provides a defense of the following thesis: When there is reasonable disagreement over the design of morally necessary collective action schemes, it would not be reasonable to reject the authority of a democratic decision procedure to settle these disputes. My first argument is a straightforward application of contractualist reasoning, and mirrors T. M. Scanlon's defense of a principle of fairness for the distribution of benefits produced by a cooperative scheme. My second argument develops and defends the intuition that treating others morally requires respecting their exercise of moral judgment, or a sense of justice. I conclude by addressing the problem of disagreement over the design of the democratic decision procedure itself, and rebutting Jeremy Waldron's claim that democratic authority is incompatible with judicial review.
- Subjects
DEMOCRACY; POLITICAL systems; COLLECTIVE action; SOCIAL action; JUSTICE; JUDICIAL power
- Publication
Ratio Juris, 2005, Vol 18, Issue 3, p346
- ISSN
0952-1917
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1467-9337.2005.00302.x