Lecture: Holding the Centre? Politics, Pluralism and Public Law
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Credit: Edinburgh Law School
Public law faces a puzzle prompted by the rise in populism and political polarisation in recent times: on the one hand, the values of public law including the rule of law, fundamental rights protections, the separation of powers and democratic government generally celebrate and provide structures to support the political disagreement and value pluralism which informs much of the populism and political polarisation we are witnessing as a standard feature of constitutional democratic government; on the other hand, these developments seem to challenge those very values.
In his inaugural lecture Professor Cormac Mac Amhlaigh will argue that the key to resolving this puzzle is the ideal of a value-based political community which ‘holds the centre’ in the context of value pluralism and political disagreement.
It will reflect upon different answers to the question of what holding the centre looks like in constitutional and political theory with a view to better understanding the difference between political disagreement and value pluralism – which the values of public law endorse and promote - and political polarization and political extremism – which potentially undermine them.
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