The question of how communities may author their own laws, thereby manifesting autonomy (“self-legislation”), arises throughout the history of political thought. In Democratic Law, her Berkeley Tanner Lectures, Seana Valentine Shiffrin offers a distinguished contribution to this long inquiry: she argues that law’s value within democratic societies rests on its communicative capacity, enabling citizens to express their recognition of each other’s equal status.
Following an insightful introduction by editor Hannah Ginsborg, Shiffrin’s first lecture, “Democratic Law,” provides the philosophical groundwork for the rest of the volume. Shiffrin characterizes democracy as a system that treats its members with equal concern and respect, and one that enables its citizens to serve as the “equal and exclusive co-authors” of its legal norms and directives (20). Law plays a distinctive and crucial role on this account because it allows us to identify and to communicate our shared moral commitments. Foremost among these joint...
