WORK
Between Facts and Norms
Habermas's 1992 magnum opus of legal and political theory — the work that applied discourse ethics to modern constitutional democracy and developed the most systematic Habermasian framework for thinking about law, rights, and democratic legitimacy.
Between Facts and Norms (German: Faktizität und Geltung, 1992) is Habermas's definitive work on legal and political theory. The book applies the framework of discourse ethics to the institutions of modern constitutional democracy, arguing that legal legitimacy in complex modern societies rests on the communicative conditions under which laws could be accepted as legitimate by those subject to them. The book's central argument is that there is an internal relation — not merely an external compatibility — between the rule of law and democratic self-government: legitimate law presupposes democratic discourse among citizens who are simultaneously its authors and its subjects. The framework grounds a distinctive Habermasian approach to constitutional interpretation, rights theory, and the relationship between civil society and formal political institutions — an approach that has been particularly influential in European legal philosophy and that provides the theoretical resources this volume deploys to analyze AI governance deficits.
