ivr
IVR2022
SW03
JÜRGEN HABERMAS’ FAKTIZITÄT UND GELTUNG, THIRTY YEARS ON. REVISITING JÜRGEN HABERMAS’ LEGAL THEORY
CONVENORS: EDUARDO A. CHIA, DANIEL DODDS
2022 marks thirty years since the original publication of Jürgen Habermas’ Faktizität und Geltung (In Between Facts and Norms). Thirty years on, we believe it is necessary to reflect and discuss the current challenges to Faktizität und Geltung in terms of three issues relating to the theory and philosophy of law. First, how does Habermas’s law theory respond to economic globalisation and its impact on legal systems? Does the theory’s scope possess timeless theoretical elements that make it suitable to address phenomena that have recently struck mainstream legal theory, such as the “non-state law” or law without the state? This is relevant considering global power shifts that have weakened the state as the primary juridical determinant. These factors have brought law theories into trouble, such as legal positivism. Similarly, it is worth asking what further conclusions we might draw from Habermas’s analysis of the tension between the co-originality of public and private autonomy. Indeed, this era seems to be hallmarked by the strengthening of some private autonomies through an uncontrolled expansion of their economic capacities by dint of the legal form.

Second, addressing subsequent debates on the foundations of the discursive law theory and its internal elements could be valuable regarding certain aspects of the theory. For example, according to Habermas, is modern law autonomous? If so, what kind of legal autonomy does it have? Moreover, how does it interact with other normative orders’ autonomy? Likewise, assessing what lessons the procedural paradigm of the law leaves us for today’s contemporary plural and unequal societies is also of interest.

Finally, thirty years may seem a relatively short time, but the period has witnessed many unprecedented political events and social processes. Significant critical reflection of them has taken place. Therefore, it is necessary to look at the effects that Faktizität und Geltung has had within critical legal theory and how it dialogues with subsequent developments within the field. What does Habermas’s critical theory of law offer us in today’s current framework marked by a plurality of critical legal approaches?

Additionally, we invite you to reflect on the value and contribution of Faktizität und Geltung considering developments over the last three decades. E.g., transformations in the public sphere, the consolidation of global capitalism and the increasingly ambivalent embedding of the legal form with the economy. In this context, the tension between facticity and validity makes law seem paradoxical, intertwined as a liberating and oppressive social tool at the same time. This workshop aims to generate a discussion mainly based on the aforementioned questions. However, other topics are also of interest and welcome, insofar as they align with the legal theory and philosophy of law in the context of Jürgen Habermas’s complete oeuvre.

All interested applicants are invited to send abstracts of 500-800 words as a text file (not pdf) in English to eduardo.chia@gmail.com and doddsdaniel@gmail.com before 31 May 2022 at the latest. The texts should be written using Times New Roman font size 12, 1.5 line spacing. Abstracts should indicate possible paper structure, an outline of the argument, tentative bibliography and five keywords. Likewise, institutional affiliation and a very brief biography of the submitters are requested (no more than 100 words).