Public Reason and Courts

A comprehensive study of public reason for courts, with contributions from leading scholars in philosophy, political science and law.

This book will be of interest for anyone interested in the legitimacy problems of domestic high courts or international courts and to those interested in public reason and political legitimacy more generally. The preface and introductory chapter introduces the topic in a way that makes it accessible to non-experts.Public Reason and Courts is an interdisciplinary study of public reason and courts with contributions from leading scholars in legal theory, political philosophy and political science. The book's chapters demonstrate the breadth of ways in which public reason and public justification is currently seen as relevant for adjudicative reasoning and review practices, and includes critical assessments of different ways that the idea of public reason has been applied to courts. It shows that public reason is not just an abstract theoretical concept used by political philosophers, but an idea that spurs new perspectives and normative frameworks also for legal scholars and judges. In particular, the book demonstrates the potential, and the limitations, of the idea of public reason as a source of legitimacy for courts, in a context where many courts face political backlashes and crisis of trust.