TY - JOUR
T1 - The Foundations of Constitutional Democracy
T2 - The Kelsen-Natural Law Controversy
AU - Gibbs, Nathan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2024/2/27
Y1 - 2024/2/27
N2 - In the immediate post-war period, a set of thinkers, most notably Jacques Maritain, developed influential natural law theories of constitutional democracy. The central tenet of the natural law approach to the post-war settlement was that, without the type of foundational understanding of the constitutional system it was proposing, the new democratic political institutions would relapse into totalitarianism. In response to this natural law challenge, Hans Kelsen sought to explicate and defend a self-consciously secular and relativistic understanding of the basis of constitutional democracy. This article will examine the debate between the Kelsenian and the natural law view of constitutional democracy. The debate raises questions of foundational importance, and a number of issues are of particular concern in the present global context. These issues concern the role of moral pluralism and its relevance to the structure of constitutional democracy, and the relationship between universal values and the common good of particular communities.
AB - In the immediate post-war period, a set of thinkers, most notably Jacques Maritain, developed influential natural law theories of constitutional democracy. The central tenet of the natural law approach to the post-war settlement was that, without the type of foundational understanding of the constitutional system it was proposing, the new democratic political institutions would relapse into totalitarianism. In response to this natural law challenge, Hans Kelsen sought to explicate and defend a self-consciously secular and relativistic understanding of the basis of constitutional democracy. This article will examine the debate between the Kelsenian and the natural law view of constitutional democracy. The debate raises questions of foundational importance, and a number of issues are of particular concern in the present global context. These issues concern the role of moral pluralism and its relevance to the structure of constitutional democracy, and the relationship between universal values and the common good of particular communities.
KW - constitutional theory
KW - Kelsen
KW - natural law
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85186391827&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/cjlj.2024.3
DO - 10.1017/cjlj.2024.3
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85186391827
SN - 2056-4260
VL - 37
SP - 79
EP - 107
JO - Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence
JF - Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence
IS - 1
ER -