Reasonableness and Value Pluralism in Law and Politics

Abstract

The concept of “reasonableness” is deeply engrained both in legal theory and in political philosophy. In the former jurisprudential arguments about reasonableness are informed by the growing use of this category in international law in European law and also in national legal orders in particular in constitutional and administrative law of many countries. In the latter i.e. in political philosophy “reasonableness” is one of the key concepts of contemporary political liberalism where it plays the role of a criterion (or of the set of criteria) of appropriateness of certain rationales for the use of coercion by the state towards individuals and thereby is a crucial criterion of the limits of legitimacy of the liberal state.