Law Commons^™

Chapter 3: Civic Education And Democracy's Flaws, Robert L. Tsai

Faculty Scholarship

Today, liberalism and democracy are beset by competitors that seek to return power to religious traditionalists or partisans masquerading as civic republicans.¹ In such an environment, can civic education do some good, and even help bridge our society’s deepening divides?

Seana Shiffrin has characteristically brought deep learning and penetrating insight to the project of civic education in a modern democracy. Against a “dominant” model of citizenship in which “citizens vote and hand off power to their representatives”— which she believes encourages the people to maintain an unhealthy distance from government— she proposes a richer account of political community in …

Critique & Praxis: A Pure Theory Of Illusions, Values, And Tactics, And An Answer To The Question: "What Is To Be Done?", Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

We are going through an unprecedented period of political instability. With the rise of the alt-right and of xenophobic sentiment, and the fallout of neoliberal government policies, our political future is at stake. These times call for the type of critical theory and praxis that gave rise to the Frankfurt School in the 1920s and to the critical ferment of the 1970s. Yet, in the face of our crises today, contemporary critical theory seems disarmed.

Critical theory is in disarray because of a wave of anti-foundational challenges in the 1960s that shattered the epistemological foundations of the Frankfurt School. The …

Sandel On Religion In The Public Square, Hugh Baxter

Faculty Scholarship

In the final chapter of "Justice" (2009), Sandel calls for a “new politics of the common good,” which he presents as an alternative to John Rawls’s idea of public reason. Sandel calls “misguided” Rawls’s search for “principles of justice that are neutral among competing conceptions of the good life.” According to Sandel, “[i]t is not always possible to define our rights and duties without taking up substantive moral questions; and even when it’s possible it may not be desirable.” In taking up these moral questions, Sandel writes, we must allow specifically religious convictions and reasons into the sphere of public …