The Concept of Liberal Democratic Law

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This book develops a historical concept of liberal democratic law through readings of pivotal twentieth-century legal theorists, including Herbert Hart, Ronald Dworkin, Duncan Kennedy, Rudolf Smend, Hans Kelsen, and Carl Schmitt. It assesses their jurisprudential positions against the backdrop of European metaphysics, from which modern liberal democratic law emerged. Two key narratives are central to this history. The first traces the philosophical reflection on the epistemological and ontological status of legal concepts from Plato to Hobbes, known as the realist-nominalist debate. The second explores the philosophical and political discourses on law, sovereignty, and justice, beginning with the nomos-physis debate in fifth-century Athens and continuing through medieval, modern, and twentieth-century views on the relationship between law and power. Methodologically, the book presents the legal theories of Hart, Dworkin, Kennedy, Smend, Kelsen, and Schmitt as a distillation process, extracting the essential elements of liberal democratic law from the metaphysical narratives that shaped and sometimes distorted its aspirations. By synthesizing insights from jurisprudence and philosophy, this work offers a significant and original re-articulation of the concept of democratic law.