Questioning the Foundations of Public Law

321 Pages·2018·4.761 MB·English

by  Michael A Wilkinson, Michael A Wilkinson;Michael W Dowdle (editor)

QUESTIONING THE FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC LAW
In 2010, Martin Loughlin, Professor of Public Law at the LSE, published Foundations of
Public Law, “an account of the foundation of the discipline of public law with a view to
identifying its essential character”. The book has become a landmark in the field, and it
has been said, notably by one its major critics, that it now provides the ‘starting point’ for
any deeper inquiry into the subject. The purpose of this volume is critically to engage
with Foundations—conceptually, comparatively and historically—from the viewpoints of
public law, private law, political, social and legal theory, as well as jurisdictional perspectives
including the UK, the US, India, and Continental Europe. Scholars also consider the legacy
and continuing relevance of Foundations in the light of developments in transnational law,
global law and regional integration in the European Union.
ii
Questioning the Foundations
of Public Law
Edited by
Michael A Wilkinson
and
Michael W Dowdle
HART PUBLISHING
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Wilkinson, Michael A., editor. | Dowdle, Michael W., editor.
Title: Questioning the foundations of public law / edited by Michael A. Wilkinson and Michael W. Dowdle.
Description: Oxford [UK] ; Portland, Oregon : Hart Publishing, 2018. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017056098 (print) | LCCN 2017056692 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509911684 (Epub) |
ISBN 9781509911677 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Public law. | Public law—Political aspects.
Classification: LCC K3150 (ebook) | LCC K3150 .W53 2018 (print) | DDC 342—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017056098
ISBN: HB: 978-1-50991-167-7
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due first and foremost to Martin Loughlin for helping to make this
project happen. He handled the challenge of exploring his work with a broad array of
commentators—both sympathetic and not so sympathetic—with tenacity and patience.
It is testament to the interest that his Foundations of Public Law has aroused that we were
able to garner contributors from such different disciplines and perspectives, all willing to
give it a full and critical treatment. We would like to thank them for the huge amount of
work they put into their chapters. And it is testament to the strength of Foundations that
Martin was able to mount such a vigorous defence and one which sets the scene for further
investigations.
This volume began with a conference at the National University of Singapore in
March 2015, where we discussed the drafts that were to become the p resent chapters. The
conference was made possible by Research Grant R-241-000-XXX-112 made under the
Singapore Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1. That grant supported
the ‘Review workshop for Martin Loughlin’s Foundations of Public Law’, which was held
at NUS Law Faculty and we would like to thank the faculty for the support they provided.
We were fortunate to be able to publish a number of chapters in earlier versions in the
journal Jus Politicum: Revue de Droit Politique and we would like to thank the journal and
Denis Baranger in particular for facilitating that process.
We would also like to thank Samuel Tschorne, Signe Rehling Larsen and Anca Bunda for
invaluable assistance with arduous editorial and bibliographical work.
Finally, thanks to Hart Publishing for their own patience and support in bringing this
volume to fruition.
Mike Wilkinson and Mike Dowdle
London, October 2017
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements .....................................................................................................................v
Contributors ...........................................................................................................................xiii
Part I: Introducing the Foundations of Public Law
1. Questioning the Foundations of Public Law and Questioning
Foundations of Public Law .................................................................................................3
Michael A Wilkinson and Michael W Dowdle
I. Introduction ..........................................................................................................3
II. Law and Politics .....................................................................................................5
III. The Evolution of the Modern State ......................................................................7
IV. Continuity and Critique .......................................................................................9
A. The Methodological Critique ........................................................................9
B. The Normative Critique ..............................................................................10
C. The Material Critique ..................................................................................12
D. The Comparative Critique ..........................................................................13
2. Political Jurisprudence ....................................................................................................15
Martin Loughlin
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................15
II. Schools of Jurisprudence ....................................................................................15
III. The Nature of the Inquiry ...................................................................................17
IV. The Political Domain ..........................................................................................19
V. The State ..............................................................................................................22
VI. Power and Authority ...........................................................................................23
VII. Constitution .........................................................................................................26
VIII. The Logic of Political Jurisprudence ..................................................................26
IX. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................28
Part II: The Methodological Critique
3. Questioning a Uniform Concept of Public Law ............................................................33
Andrew Halpin
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................33
II. A Preliminary Digression on Goldsmith and Levinson ....................................34
III. The Autonomy of Public Law .............................................................................37
IV. Relating a Science of Political Right to Public Law ............................................40
V. The Grammar of Public Law ..............................................................................45
VI. Why the Juristic Turn? .........................................................................................48
viii Table of Contents
4. The Tragic Politics of Public Law ....................................................................................51
Panu Minkkinen
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................51
II. ‘The Whirlwind of Rights’...................................................................................54
III. The Polemical Intervention ................................................................................57
IV. Tragic Metapolitics ..............................................................................................60
5. Immanence and Irreconcilability: On the Character of Public Law as Political
Jurisprudence ...................................................................................................................63
Jacco Bomhoff
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................63
II. Taking Religion Seriously: Political Jurisprudence as Secular ...........................67
III. Autonomy and Ambivalence...............................................................................71
IV. Taking Legalism Seriously: Political Jurisprudence as Law ...............................73
V. Taking Exteriority Seriously: Public Law as Immanent? ....................................76
VI. Ritual and ‘In-between’ Spaces ...........................................................................79
VII. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................81
Part III: The Normative Critique
6. Concrete Order Formation or Rational Will Formation? Constituent Power
as the Ratio of Voluntas ...................................................................................................85
Hauke Brunkhorst
I. The Dialectic of Potestas and Potentia ����������������������������������������������������������������85
II. Nomos and the Genealogy of Political Power .....................................................87
III. The Social Origin of Political Power ..................................................................90
IV. Secularisation, Sovereignty and Rationality .......................................................92
V. Constituent Power, Ratio and Voluntas ..............................................................94
VI. The Radical Democratic Reading of Constituent Power...................................96
7. Private Law, Potentia and the Ethical: On What Justification Does the State
Coercively Tax its Subjects in Order to Build Bridges, Fund the BBC,
and Subsidise Charities? ..................................................................................................99
James Penner
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................99
II. Loughlin on Societas, Universitas, Potestas and Potentia ..................................100
III. Kant on Private Right and the Foundations of the State .................................102
IV. Raz on the Rights of Citizens and the Justification of the State ......................103
V. Potestas and Potentia, and the Moral and the Ethical ......................................104
VI. Justifying Potentia and the Ethical in Politics ..................................................107
VII. Conclusion .........................................................................................................113
8. A Conventional Narrative: The Rhetorical Shape of Foundations of Public Law .......115
Anna Yeatman
I. Introduction: A Conventional Narrative ..........................................................115
II. The Early Modern Discovery of the Idea of the State......................................116
Table of Contents ix
III. The Liberal Idea of the State ..............................................................................123
IV. The Twentieth Century State—The Narrative of ‘the Triumph of the Social’
and the Displacement of Political Right by Regulatory Power .........................126
V. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................131
9. Foundations of Public Law and Postnational Constitutionalism ...............................133
Neil Walker
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................133
II. What Would Count as Evidence of an Underlying Shift? .................................134
III. On Whom Lies the Burden to Imagine and Chart the Future? ........................138
Part IV: The Material Critique
10. Putting Public Law in its Place: State-Theoretical Comments on Foundations
of Public Law .................................................................................................................143
Bob Jessop
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................143
II. Seven Approaches to the Analysis of the State ..................................................144
III. Conceptual History and its Limitations ............................................................146
IV. Beyond Allgemeine Staatslehre ...........................................................................151
A. State Territory ..............................................................................................152
B. State Apparatus............................................................................................153
C. State Population ..........................................................................................154
D. The State Idea ..............................................................................................156
V. Public Law, the Multi-Dimensionality of the State and Substantive
Crisis Mechanisms ..............................................................................................157
VI. Concluding Comments and Direct Questions ..................................................161
11. The Materiality of Political Jurisprudence .................................................................165
Marco Goldoni
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................165
II. Methodology: The Prudential Rationality of Political Jurisprudence .............166
III. Trajectory: From a Functional to a Reflexive Political Jurisprudence ..............168
IV. Object: Right Ordering and its Grammar .........................................................172
V. Subjectivity: The Material Constitution ............................................................175
12. Public Law and the Autonomy of the Political: A Material Critique .........................181
Michael A Wilkinson
I. Introduction ........................................................................................................181
II. What Grounds the Autonomy of the Political? .................................................185
III. The Relation between the Political and the Economic in the Material
Ordering of the Nomos .......................................................................................188
IV. The Interwar Breakdown of Public Law: A Crisis of the State .........................193
V. The Post-War Constitutional Imagination: A Transformation of the State ......199
VI. Conclusion ..........................................................................................................204