Arthur Ripstein: The Idea of the Public – Lecture 1 | Frankfurt Lectures

Prof Arthur Ripstein (Faculty of Law and Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto), as part of the “Frankfurt Lectures” series.

Lecture I: The Idea of the Public

Public institutions exercise powers that no private person can enjoy; they collect taxes, impose binding resolution on disputes, define and punish crimes and make difficult choices that benefit some people more than others. Behind the exercise of these distinctively public powers lies a more general obligation to reason in ways that are fundamentally different from the ways in which private persons reason. Prominent contemporary writers have mistaken this idea of the public for either an idea of impartiality or as a technology for avoiding official discretion. I will articulate a Kantian account of the distinctively public nature of a legal order as well as the distinctive form of reasoning proper to its decision-making.

Presented by: Research Centre Normative Orders and Research Initiative „ConTrust. Trust in Conflict. Political Life under Conditions of Uncertainty“