Sandefur on Public Reason
Timothy Sandefur responds to my post entitled Natural Law, Public Reason, and the Constitution at Freespace. The gist of his argument is that a Rawlsian ideal of public reason would limit public officials to the status quo. Here’s how Sandefur puts it:
- The problem with this is that this assumes that the role of a public official is to echo the populace—not to teach it. That is, our leaders ought to follow, and not to lead.
I’ve actually written a whole article that deals with a similar point made by Jeremy Waldron. An electronic version of Novel Public Reasons is available; just click on the link.