The boundaries of public reason
By: FROHOCK, Fred M
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ArticlePublisher: New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, December 1997American Political Science Review 91, 4, p. 833-844Abstract: The main burden of public reason in the liberal state is to reconcile claims originating in political differences among persons who may have nothing in common except membership in the political system. One of the more prominent exemplars for such reasoning is a supreme court in a constitutional regime with judicial review (Rawls 1993, Lecture VI). It is easy to see why. Deliberation is the preeminent mode of rational dialogue in a legal forum. Claims enter legal domains thick with reasons, justifications, descriptions, and in general with attachments that encourage reflections and judgments within a framework of accepted rules of inference, evidence, and argument. Even though all citizens in a democracy must be prepared to use reason in public matters, judicial forums seem more effective in modeling basic expectations for reasoning in liberal settings. These expectations include the thought that the state can be reasonably independent of partisan or divisive values. Public reasoning in its judicial mode is expected to produce impartial conclusions and to achieve the political reconciliations needed for consensual governing in liberal democracies by relying on values that everyone would reasonably endorse.
The main burden of public reason in the liberal state is to reconcile claims originating in political differences among persons who may have nothing in common except membership in the political system. One of the more prominent exemplars for such reasoning is a supreme court in a constitutional regime with judicial review (Rawls 1993, Lecture VI). It is easy to see why. Deliberation is the preeminent mode of rational dialogue in a legal forum. Claims enter legal domains thick with reasons, justifications, descriptions, and in general with attachments that encourage reflections and judgments within a framework of accepted rules of inference, evidence, and argument. Even though all citizens in a democracy must be prepared to use reason in public matters, judicial forums seem more effective in modeling basic expectations for reasoning in liberal settings. These expectations include the thought that the state can be reasonably independent of partisan or divisive values. Public reasoning in its judicial mode is expected to produce impartial conclusions and to achieve the political reconciliations needed for consensual governing in liberal democracies by relying on values that everyone would reasonably endorse.
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