Robert P. Burns (Northwestern University – Pritzker School of Law) has posted Law and the Modern Identity on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This essay explores the plural elements of our modern identity and their significance for the legal order. This modern identity is all-pervasive and envelops us. It comprises goods that may be in conflict, but "for all that they don't refute each other." The essay provides an explication of and commentary on Charles Taylor's magisterial accounts of the modern identity. I agree that "if we are going to live by the modern identity, it better be by an examined version of it." I suggest ways in which in the legal world too, "modernity urgently needs to be saved from its most unconditional supporters." Finally, I argue that an account of modernity is a necessary step in identifying the tasks of a general theory of legal procedure.