Law and Reflexive Politics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Republican Constitutionalism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Citizenship, Passive and Active

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 3-9

   3. Republicanism and its Legacy

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 10-18

   4. Habermas on the ‘Interpenetration’ of Law and Politics

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 19-30

   5. American Civic Republicanism

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 31-51

   6. Dworkin and the Law as Forum of Principle

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 52-60

   7. The Containment Thesis

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 61-69

3. Political Conflict Under Legal Categories: A systems-theoretical critique of Republican Constitutionalism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 71-95

      PDF

   2. Law, Society and Conflict

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 96-101

   3. Law and the Double Contingency of Conflict

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 102-115

   4. Legal Expectations

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 116-128

   5. The Relationship of Conflict and Law

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 129-135

   6. Conflicts Conflated

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 136-148

   7. Conflict Re-enacted

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 149-186

   8. Conflict Severed

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 187-210

   9. Conflict Normalised

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 211-224

4. Reflexive Politics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 225-225

      PDF

   2. The Exclusionary and the Reflexive

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 227-233

   3. Theories of Political Reflexivity

      • Emilios A. Christodoulidis

      Pages 234-247

Law is the great concealer; and law is everywhere. Or so claimed Marxists once upon a time. [Law] was imbricated within the mode of production and productive relations themselves . . . it intruded brusquely within alien categories, re-appearing bewigged and gowned in the form of ideology; . . . it was an arm of politics and politics was one of its arms; it was an academic discipline, subjected to the rigour of its own autonomous logic, it contributed to the definition of the self-identity of both the rulers 1 and the ruled. Does the old critique of domination still hold any sway? Apparently not. Or so even scholars of the far Left keep reminding us in their eagerness to embrace law and proclaim their allegiance to the new constitutional politics of civil society. Old Marxists now describe popular sovereignty as 'co-original' with, and democracy 'internally linked' to 2 constitutional rights and find it hard to remember what it was they once disagreed with liberals about. No tension left between emancipatory politics and oppressive law; instead we have reciprocal constitution, simultaneous realisation. In the Left's embracing of the new constitutionalisms its old critique of law - the critique of the law's concealment of class inequality, class conflict and class action - is left behind.

• conflict
• constitution
• democracy
• Habermas
• ideology
• logic
• Luhmann
• Marx
• politics
• sovereignty

• The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

  Emilios A. Christodoulidis

Policies and ethics