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The title of this important book tells only half of the story. The book brilliantly stakes out the opposing philosophical and political positions defended by Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller during the Weimar republic, but its ultimate aim is more ambitious. David Dyzenhaus attempts to link the travails of the Weimar republic to contemporary Anglo-American legal and constitutional debate. His bridge is the 'fascinating parallel' he discerns between Kelsen's Pure Theory of law and John Rawls's account of public reason. The problem these thinkers share is how to account for the tension that can be discerned between legitimacy and legality.
Anglo-American liberalism, according to Dyzenhaus, appears to have changed its primary focus after the fall of communism. Emphasis has shifted from a defence of individual rights to securing a stable liberal society in the face of pluralism. Liberalism not only defends pluralism, but creates the institutions that ensure its expansion. Dyzenhaus acknowledges that we live 'in the era of nation states where political conflict no longer is confined to external affairs, but characterizes internal politics, where groups with conflicting understandings of the good life struggle for power.' Because pluralism, according to Rawls, does not describe only the reasonable...