Democratic Law

"This introduction offers a concise overview of the book.

It outlines the three chapters of Seana Shiffrin's core text, offers brief summaries of the three commentaries by Niko Kolodny, Richard Brooks and Anna Stilz, and highlights some key points from Shiffrin's extensive replies.

It emphasizes two of the pretheoretical assumptions motivating Shiffrin's argument for the communicative character of democratic law: that democracy is not defined in terms of elections, and that both democracy and law must be conceived as a means for fulfilling moral obligations.

It also emphasizes the Rawlsian background to Shiffrin's argument, in particular the idea that justice requires that we realize for one another the social bases of self-respect.

Finally, it underscores the timeliness of Shiffrin's account in the light of widely recognized threats to democracy in the US and elsewhere"--.