Fundamental Law

Abstract

Fundamental law is a politicized species of law which is incompatible with a firm separation between law and politics and a strict differentiation between legal reason and political reason. There is a correspondence between fundamental law and the world of the political, a world which, even though advanced through the language of law, shapes the conditions of human existence by establishing structures of authority and obedience and framing what is just or unjust, good or evil, right or wrong. The conflicts that emerge in that world-which at its core concern contestable expressions of fundamental law-are articulated through the medium of constitutional discourse. Those conflicts should not be approached solely as matters of legal interpretation since their settlement necessarily involves political judgment.