In this paper, I argue that Habermas' proceduralist model of law can be put to feminist ends in at least two significant ways. First, in presenting an alternative to the liberal and welfare models of laws, the proceduralist model offers feminism a way out of the equality/difference dilemma. Both these attempts to secure women's equality by emphasising women's sameness to men or their difference from men have placed the onus on women to either find a way of integrating themselves into (...) existing institutions or to confront the so-called question of women's difference. The proceduralist model renders this dilemma irrelevant. Instead, it proceeds from the fact of sexual difference; a fact that produces competing and conflicting needs and interests that require interpretation by both men and women. This, I argue, marks a change in the very way we conceptualise the so-called problem of women's difference, insofar as the question is no longer framed in these terms. Second, I argue that this deliberative process over the interpretation of conflicting interests affects a fundamental shift in the nature of legal institutions themselves, insofar as law is no longer a vehicle for promoting male interests. (shrink)

Ota Weinberger was a Czech-Austrian jurist, whose core academic work on issues of democracy was mostly published in the 1990s. In his writings, he focused primarily on legal philosophy from a positivist perspective. However, there are also significant overlaps with the field of political theory as Weinberger examined the conditions for the functioning of contemporary democracies. In this paper, some of the main features of his conception of the so-called “structured democracy” are clarified. The conception opposed several other democratic theories, (...) especially the elitist (Schumpeterian), the majoritarian, but also the discursive one, as represented by Jürgen Habermas, with whom Weinberger fundamentally disagreed. The paper focuses on several key elements of his theory, such as the leading ideas, the role of institutions, open society, and his critique of marketing methods in politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAt first sight, the work of the German legal philosopher and constitutional theorist, Robert Alexy, appears to offer a welcome counter-example to the general insulation of Anglo-American ju...