Law Commons^™

Religion, Politics And Human Rights: Understanding The Role Of Christianity In The Promotion Of Human Rights, Barbara Ann Rieffer

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Global Face of Public Faith by David Hollenbach. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003. 259pp.

and

For All Peoples and All Nations by John Nurser. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005. 209pp.

Public Legal Reason, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay develops an ideal of public legal reason--a normative theory of legal reasons that is appropriate for a society characterized by religious and moral pluralism. One of the implications of this theory is that normative theorizing about public and private law should eschew reliance on the deep premises of deontology or consequentialism and should instead rely on what the author calls public values--values that can be affirmed without relying on the deep and controversial premises of particular comprehensive moral doctrines.

The ideal of public legal reason is then applied to a particular question--whether welfarism (a particular form of normative …