Solidarity in Individualized Societies by Søren Juul

Author:Søren Juul [Juul, Søren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780415640985
Google: qRopUAoGCYoC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-01-15T04:45:23+00:00

Forst has directly related to this relativistic view and defends the idea of the ethical neutrality of law. According to Forst, ethical values and claims, for example religious beliefs, often present themselves as absolute or true standards of the good life. Precisely for that reason he finds it important to distinguish between ethical claims and neutral legal principles. The latter do not specify how different ethical demands must be weighted against each other and within the frames of an overriding normative consensus of the general rules of the game there is room for normative conflicts of all kinds. Reasonable people recognize, according to Forst, general norms because they are built on reciprocity and consequently are acceptable to all. Even though one may be convinced of one’s own moral superiority, the recognition of neutral principles of justice implies a certain self-limitation and recognition of the other person as an equal legal person (Forst 2002).

Justice is in Forst’s view a deontological and not a teleological concept. Liberal principles thus do not constitute an ethical form of life but a system of justified principles (Forst 2002). Only mutually and generally justified principles can, according to Forst, be plural, open, inclusive and binding for all citizens. The normative idea of the state of law is to respect all members of society as free and equal individuals independently of their concrete ethical identity. Thus legal rights are an abstract-formal protection of individual autonomy (ibid.).

When the critics deny the idea of the neutrality of the law and accuse liberal principles of being blind to cultural and ethical diversity, according to Forst, they confuse law with the implementation of the law. The interpretation of legal rules is by no means exclusively based on juridical competences but also reflects political discourses. Therefore the critics need to make up their minds whether it is the principle of neutrality or rather the juridical practice they are against (Forst 2002). By according all citizens the same rights and duties, the law in Forst’s view recognizes both the individual’s equality and their ethical peculiarities. This does not mean that forms of affirmative action in favour of certain unprivileged groups are always ill-timed, but that this is a matter of the implementation of the law rather than about the formal principles on which it is based (ibid.).

With his distinction between law and implementation of the law and his emphasis on the influence of political discourses when one speaks of the latter, Forst comes close to the concept of judgement which plays a decisive role in the present book: the idea that legal rules, ethics and methodological rules are always interpreted by a judgement in situation. The problem of Forst’s work is that he does not seriously discuss what characterizes the present judgement and only provides highly abstract principles of justice without specifying what in the present situation can be understood by good legal practice and without relating the concept to discussions of practical matters.

As has been seen, Forst introduces a distinction between law

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