Jurgen Habermas's views on legal validity and discourse ethics: A literature review

Authors

  • Rika Febriani Universitas Gadjah Mada
  • Supartiningsih Supartiningsih Universitas Gadjah Mada
  • Sindung Tjahyadi Universitas Gadjah Mada

Keywords:

Communicative Action, Ethical Discourse, Law, Modern State.

Abstract

In modern states, law is often reduced to merely a tool of power. Many contemporary practices treat law as nothing more than a procedural requirement, disregarding its substantive values and the social conditions of society. This article discusses the validity of law within a political community from Habermas's perspective. According to him, the law must be discursive and stem from rational subjects capable of effective communication. The fundamental questions addressed are: how can law ideally be derived from norms within a political society? And how can law subsequently foster a democratic society? This article employs historical-factual methods, with primary sources drawn from the works of Jí¼rgen Habermas. Habermas used discourse ethics and the theory of communicative action. Data collection is conducted through textual analysis. The article concludes that the validity of law must originate from discursive norms present in society, even though there may be tensions between theory and practice in society.

References

Arpannudin, I. (2023). The sociology of citizenship. Jurnal Civics: Media Kajian Kewarganegaraan, 20(2), i–ii. https://scholarhub.uny.ac.id/civics/vol20/iss2/21

Bakker, A., & Zubair, A. C. (1994). Metodologi penelitian filsafat. Penerbit Kanisius.

Baxter, H. (2002). Habermas: The discourse theory of law and democracy. Buffalo Law Review, 50. https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/384

Bellamy, R. (2017). Constitutionalism and democracy. Routledge.

Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. SAGE Publications, Inc.

Froomkin, A. M. M. (2003). Toward a critical theory of cyberspace published by: the Harvard Law Review Association. The Harvard Law Review Association.

Froomkin, A. M. M. (2005). Habermas@discourse.net: Toward a critical theory of cyberspace. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.363840

Gerstenberg, O. (2019). Radical democracy and the rule of law: Reflections on J. Habermas’ legal philosophy. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 17(4), 1054–1058. https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/moz090

Gluckman, Max. (2017). Politics, law and ritual in tribal society. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://www.routledge.com/Politics-Law-and-Ritual-in-Tribal-Society/Gluckman/p/book/9781412846158

Habermas, J. (1986). Law as medium and law as institution. In Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State (pp. 203–220). DE GRUYTER. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110921526.203

Habermas, J. (1988). Morality and ethical life: Does Hegel’s critique of Kant apply to discourse ethics. Northwestern University Law Review, 83. https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/illlr83&id=54&div=&collection=

Habermas., J. (1990). Jürgen Habermas: Morality, society and ethics. Acta Sociologica, 33(2), 93–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/000169939003300201

Habermas, Jürgen. (2015). Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. Polity Press. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Between+Facts+and+Norms%3A+Contributions+to+a+Discourse+Theory+of+Law+and+Democracy-p-9780745694269

Johnson, J. (1991). Habermas on strategic and communicative action. Political Theory, 19(2), 181–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591791019002003/ASSET/0090591791019002003.FP.PNG_V03

Lafont, C. (2003). Procedural justice? Implications of the Rawls-Habermas debate for discourse ethics. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 29(2), 163–181. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453703029002143

McNiff, J. (2013). Action research: Principles and practice (3rd ed.). Routledge. http://www.tandf.net/books/details/9780415535250/

Mouffe, C. (2017). Democracy as agonistic pluralism. In E. D. Ermarth (Ed.), Rewriting democracy: Cultural politics in postmodernity (pp. 36–47). Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315244167-3/DEMOCRACY-AGONISTIC-PLURALISM-CHANTAL-MOUFFE

Mulyono, B., Affandi, I., Suryadi, K., & Darmawan, C. (2022). Online civic engagement: Fostering citizen engagement through social media. Jurnal Civics: Media Kajian Kewarganegaraan, 19(1), 75–85. https://doi.org/10.21831/jc.v19i1.49723

Murphy, T. F. (1994). Discourse ethics: Moral theory or political ethic? New German Critique, 62, 111–135. https://doi.org/10.2307/488511

Nurjanah, N., Abdulkarim, A., Komalasari, K., Bestari, P., & Suwandi, M. A. (2024). Critical literacy of young citizens in the digital era. Jurnal Civics: Media Kajian Kewarganegaraan, 21(2), 352–358. https://doi.org/10.21831/jc.v21i2.70232

Rasmussen, D. (1996). Critical theory and philosophy. In The handbook of critical theory. Blackwell Publishers.

Rehg, W. (2023). Insight and solidarity: The discourse ethics of Jürgen Habermas. University of California Press. https://books.google.co.id/books?id=3et8dQvq3RAC

Sarat, A. (2017). “…the law is all over": Power, " resistance and the legal consciousness of the welfare poor. In P. Ewick (Ed.), Consciousness and ideology (pp. 347–383). Taylor and Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315259604-12/LAW-POWER-RESISTANCE-LEGAL-CONSCIOUSNESS-WELFARE-POOR-AUSTIN-SARAT

Suyato, S. (2023). Engineering the development of democratic citizenship education curriculum in the global era: A few perspectives from theoretical frameworks. Jurnal Civics: Media Kajian Kewarganegaraan, 20(1), 26–35. https://doi.org/10.21831/jc.v20i1.59915

Tjahyadi, S. (2003). Teori kritis Jurgen Habermas: Asumsi-asumsi dasar menuju metodologi kritik sosial. Jurnal Filsafat, 13(2), 180–197. https://jurnal.ugm.ac.id/wisdom/article/view/31322

Downloads

Published

2025-02-09

How to Cite

Febriani, R., Supartiningsih, S., & Tjahyadi, S. (2025). Jurgen Habermas’s views on legal validity and discourse ethics: A literature review. Jurnal Civics: Media Kajian Kewarganegaraan, 22(1), 20–31. Retrieved from https://journal.uny.ac.id/index.php/civics/article/view/83205

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 1 (2025)

Section

Article

License

  1. Authors certify that the work reported here has not been published before and contains no materials the publication of which would violate any copyright or other personal or proprietary right of any person or entity.
  2. Authors transfer or license the copyright of publishing to Jurnal Civics: Media Kajian Kewarganegaraan to publish the article in any media format, to share, to disseminate, to index, and to maximize the impact of the article in any databases.
  3. Authors hereby agree to transfer a copyright for publishing to Jurnal Civics: Media Kajian Kewarganegaraanas a Publisher of the manuscript. 
  4. Authors reserve the following: 
    1. all proprietary rights other than copyright such as patent rights; 
    2. the right to use all or part of this article in future works of our own such as in books and lectures;
    3. use for presentation in a meeting or conference and distributing copies to attendees; 
    4. use for internal training by author's company;
    5. distribution to colleagues for their research use;
    6. use in a subsequent compilation of the author's works;
    7. inclusion in a thesis or dissertation;
    8. reuse of portions or extracts from the article in other works (with full acknowledgement of final article);
    9. preparation of derivative works (other than commercial purposes) (with full acknowledgement of final article); and
    10. voluntary posting on open web sites operated by author or author's institution for scholarly purposes, but it should follow the open access license of Creative Common CC BY-NC-SA License.