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Discourse theory of law

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Secularization, Legal Indeterminacy, And Habermas's Discourse Theory Of Law, Mark C. Modak-Truran Jan 2007

Secularization, Legal Indeterminacy, And Habermas's Discourse Theory Of Law, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

This Article focuses on Habermas’s sophisticated awareness of the tension between secularization of law and legal indeterminacy and treats his discourse theory of law as a significant test of the feasibility of reconciling these claims. In an earlier article, I criticized Habermas’s discourse of justification and his claim that it legitimated the law independently of a religious or metaphysical worldview. Even assuming I was misguided in that critique, this Article argues that Habermas’s discourse of application is incoherent and fails to maintain the secularization of the law in the face of legal indeterminacy. Given Habermas’s failure, contemporary legal theory needs …


Habermas’S Discourse Theory Of Law And The Relationship Between Law And Religion, Mark C. Modak-Truran Jan 1997

Habermas’S Discourse Theory Of Law And The Relationship Between Law And Religion, Mark C. Modak-Truran

Journal Articles

The relationship between law and religion has become the subject of a sustained and robust debate. However, unlike earlier theological attempts to ground law in religion or the Divine, participants in the modem debate rarely, if ever, argue for a theological or religious legitimation of law. Either implicitly or explicitly, there appears to be a modem consensus among legal scholars and philosophers that the world has been disenchanted. The world can no longer be viewed as an integrated, meaningful whole under a comprehensive religious or metaphysical worldview, and law can no longer be legitimized by its religious or metaphysical foundations. …