Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-qxsvm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-13T12:21:50.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Paris Is Closer than Frankfurt: The nth American Exceptionalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Kenneth Casebeer
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

James Bohman's review (1994) contributes to an important goal for the American legal academy: bringing to us the recent focus on the role of law in society of Jürgen Habermas and, by extension, contemporary Frankfurt School social theory. These comments attempt to locate Habermas broadly in three discursive contexts. My purpose will be to suggestively examine whether and how the American legal reception of Habermasian ideas has been limited—the implicit rationale being that the reception is overdue. With almost all discussion of Habermas and law taking place in Europe, it seems we must ask, Why is there no [German] social theory in America, or at least in American law? After all, the United States became the home in exile for the Frankfurt survivors, and Habermas has been writing influentially in philosophy and political theory for more than 30 years. Yet, for reasons not altogether different from the revision and partial rejection of the other American exceptionalisms (socialism, labor politics, class formations, etc.), perhaps the question in fact should be more about the particularity of American treatment of the role of law in the reproduction of society than about Habermas and his ideas.

Type
On Habermas's Faktizität und Geltung
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , 1994 , pp. 931 - 937
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 by The Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackerman, Bruce (1980) Social Justice in the Liberal State. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Bohman, James (1994) “Complexity, Pluralism and the Constitutional State: On Habermas's Faktizität und Geltung” 28 Law & Society Rev. 897.Google Scholar
Boyle, James (1985) “The Politics of Reason: Critical Legal Theory and Local Social Thought,” 133 Univ. Pennsylvania Law Rev. 685.Google Scholar
Cardozo Law Review (1989) “Hegel and Legal Theory Symposium,” 10 Cardozo Law Rev. 847.Google Scholar
Casebeer, Kenneth M. (1983) “Toward a Critical Legal Jurisprudence—A First Step by Way of the Public-Private Distinction in Constitutional Law,” 37 Univ. Miami Law Rev. 379.Google Scholar
Casebeer, Kenneth M. (1989a) “Work on a Labor Theory of Meaning,” 10 Cardozo Law Rev. 1637.Google Scholar
Casebeer, Kenneth M. (1989b) “Running on Empty: Justice Brennan's Plea, the Empty State, the City of Richmond, and the Profession,” 43 Univ. of Miami Law Rev. 989.Google Scholar
Casebeer, Kenneth M. (1994a) “Unemployment Insurance: American Social Wage, Labor Organization and Legal Ideology,” 35 British Columbia Law Rev. 259.Google Scholar
Casebeer, Kenneth M. (1994b) “Aliquippa: The Company Town and Contested Power in the Construction of Law.” School of Law, Univ. of Miami (Sept.).Google Scholar
Cohen, Jean L., & Arato, Andrew (1992) Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cornell, Drucilla (1991) Beyond Accomodation: Ethical Feminism, Deconstruction, and the Law. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald (1986) Law's Empire. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Fischl, Richard Michael (1992) “The Question That Killed Critical Legal Studies,” 17 Law & Social Inquiry 779.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1992) Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (in press) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans W. Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. English translation of Habermas 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, Thomas C. (1984) “Structuralism and Critique,” 36 Stanford Law Rev. 127.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, Allan C., & Monahan, Patrick J. (1984) “Law, Politics, and the Critical Legal Scholars: The Unfolding Drama of American Legal Thought,” 36 Stanford Law Rev. 199.Google Scholar
Hyde, Alan (1993) “Employee Caucus: A Key Institution in the Emerging System of Employment Law, 69 Chicago-Kent Law Rev. 149.Google Scholar
Joerges, Christian, & Trubek, David M., eds. (1989) Critical Legal Thought: An American-German Debate. Baden-Baden: Nomos.Google Scholar
Kelman, Mark (1987) A Guide to Critical Legal Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Klare, Karl E. (1988) “Workplace Democracy and Market Reconstruction: An Agenda for Legal Reform,” 38 Catholic Univ. Law Rev. 1.Google Scholar
Michelman, Frank (1988) “Law's Republic,” 97 Yale Law J. 1493.Google Scholar
Schlegel, John Henry (1984) “Notes toward an Intimate, Opinionated, and Affectionate History of the Conference on Critical Legal Studies,” 36 Stanford Law Rev. 391.Google Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R. (1985) “Interest Groups in American Public Law,” 38 Stanford Law Rev. 29.Google Scholar