Most constitutional theorists have despaired of a liberal consensus on the fundamental goals of constitutional order. Instead they have contented themselves with agreement on lower-level principles on which those who disagree on fundamentals may coincidentally converge or else with a process for translating fundamental disagreement into acceptable laws. The book suggests a conception of fundamental justice that liberals of competing philosophic schools may accept as fulfilling their own basic commitments. It argues that the model liberal-democratic constitution is best understood as a unity of ... More

Most constitutional theorists have despaired of a liberal consensus on the fundamental goals of constitutional order. Instead they have contented themselves with agreement on lower-level principles on which those who disagree on fundamentals may coincidentally converge or else with a process for translating fundamental disagreement into acceptable laws. The book suggests a conception of fundamental justice that liberals of competing philosophic schools may accept as fulfilling their own basic commitments. It argues that the model liberal-democratic constitution is best understood as a unity of three constitutional frameworks: libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian. Each is based on a particular conception of public reason. The book criticizes each of these frameworks insofar as its organizing conception claims to be fundamental and then moves forward to suggest a Hegelian conception of public reason within which each framework is contained as a constituent element of a whole. When viewed in this light, the liberal constitution embodies a surprising synthesis. It reconciles a commitment to individual liberty and freedom of conscience with the perfectionist idea that the state ought to cultivate a type of personality whose fundamental ends are the goods essential to dignity. Such a reconciliation may attract competing liberalisms to a consensus on an inclusive conception of public reason under which political authority is validated for those who share a confidence in the individual's inviolable worth.