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Mathilde Cohen

Selected Works

Liberalism

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Reasons For Reasons, Mathilde Cohen Dec 2009

Reasons For Reasons, Mathilde Cohen

Mathilde Cohen

This chapter examines some popular justifications for public reason-giving common in liberal political thought. An obvious way of arguing in favor of the duty to give reasons is to point out that publicly substantiating decisions is an intrinsically valuable practice. Giving reasons simply makes for better decision-making. Yet in liberal democracies reasons are increasingly defended on “instrumental” grounds. Giving reasons is valuable because some other value will thereby be realized. Reasons are used for (other) reasons. Reasons become proxies for democratic values. The giving reasons requirement results in getting credit, not so much for increasing the quality of the underlying …

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Reason Giving In Court Practice: Decision-Makers At The Crossroads, Mathilde Cohen Dec 2007

Reason Giving In Court Practice: Decision-Makers At The Crossroads, Mathilde Cohen

Mathilde Cohen

According to liberal democratic theory, public institutions’ practice—and sometimes duty—to give reasons is required so that each individual may view the state as reasonable and, therefore, legitimate. Does the giving of reasons in actual court practice achieve these goals? Drawing on empirical research carried out in a French court, this Article shows that, in practice, reason-giving often falls either short of democracy or beyond democracy. Reasons fall short of democracy in the first case because they are transformed from a device designed to “protect” citizens from arbitrariness into a professional norm intended to “protect” the judges themselves and perhaps further …

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