Vraciu, Cosmin Petru;
(2023)
Political Equality, Democratic Authority, and Legal Interpretation.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Does equality justify majority rule as a mechanism for collective decision-making? And are decisions made by majoritarian procedures (or by democratic procedures more broadly) morally authoritative? In the first 5 chapters of this thesis, I will pursue these two questions in turn. In this vein, in chapters 2 and 3, I examine two distinct principles of equality – one, which I call equality of opportunity for negative control, and which is derived from a claim to not being subordinated to others, and the other, which I call arbitral equality, and which is violated when A’s moral judgments are treated as moral judgments, while B’s moral judgments are treated as preferences. I argue that the conjunction of these two principles entails the requirement of majority rule. In chapters 4 and 5, I turn to the question of whether decisions made by democratic procedures are morally authoritative. I first consider authority in its content-independent aspect, and then in its preemptive aspect. In chapter 4, I argue that, while equality of opportunity for negative control is not able to vindicate authority in its content-independent aspect, arbitral equality is able to do so. Nevertheless, I argue that neither of them can fully vindicate authority in its preemptive sense. In order to defend this kind of authority, I turn in chapter 5 to a set of non-egalitarian considerations, namely considerations related to moral fallibility. In chapter 6, I turn to a third question: Are there any interesting claims regarding the manner in which judges ought to interpret and apply statutes that follow from a specific account of democratic authority? I argue that my account of democratic preemptive authority from chapter 5 entails some interesting claims about how judges ought to apply statutes.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Political Equality, Democratic Authority, and Legal Interpretation |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181039 |
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