Practice Job Talk: John Lawless

“Democracy Beyond Law”

Political philosophers from diverse tradition have long defended the democratic control of the state. In particular, many have argued that democracy promotes individual freedom by providing subjects with the power to control the state’s interference in their activities. But our relations and activities often are as deeply structured by informal, extra-legal norms as they are by the law. And typical defenses of political democracy provide us with little insight into (or even mislead us about) the ways in which we ought to relate to those social processes that generate these informal norms. I argue that this is a serious strike against traditional conceptions of individual freedom. But an alternative conception of freedom as involving the social standing to command others’ recognition of, and respect for, one’s moral statuses provides us with the resources we need to extend democracy beyond law.