Derechos, escepticismo y mayoritarismo

un triángulo imposible. Una crítica a la teoría de la legitimidad política de Jeremy Waldron

Abstract

Rights, Skepticism and Majoritarianism: an Impossible Triangle. A Critique of Jeremy Waldron’s Theory of Political Legitimacy

The article reconstructs and critically analyzes Jeremy Waldron’s responses to major problems on law and politics, justice and authority. Waldron claims at the same time a non-skeptical thesis about the existence of moral-political rights, a skeptical thesis about the existence of more accurate epistemic procedures to identify them, and a positive thesis about political legitimacy (participatory majoritarianism). The paper argues that his theory is consistent only if a fourth vertex, implicit in the theory, is added (the “equality of agency and epistemic capacity” of rights-holders). But this explicit addition requires abandoning and redefining two of the other elements, and this eventually conducts us to the typical claims of epistemic deliberativism. Waldron’s criticisms to judicial review are reinterpreted on these new grounds.