Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2007
Abstract
This Article focuses on Habermas’s sophisticated awareness of the tension between secularization of law and legal indeterminacy and treats his discourse theory of law as a significant test of the feasibility of reconciling these claims. In an earlier article, I criticized Habermas’s discourse of justification and his claim that it legitimated the law independently of a religious or metaphysical worldview. Even assuming I was misguided in that critique, this Article argues that Habermas’s discourse of application is incoherent and fails to maintain the secularization of the law in the face of legal indeterminacy. Given Habermas’s failure, contemporary legal theory needs to recognize that the widespread acceptance of legal indeterminacy calls into question the secularization of law as it is currently understood.
Recommended Citation
35 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 73 (2007).