On Fiona and Brettschneider

Last seminar, Fiona was concerned that in democracies someone, probably in the minority, would be dependent on the will of another, who is in the majority. This dependence seems unjust because it deprives the individual freedom to do what they choose without the constraint of others. I think Brettschneider is concerned with a similar question about how individuals must be rulers while being addressees of laws. Brettschneider thinks that Dworkin poses an interesting question. Dworkin writes, “ ‘Why am I free—how could I be thought to be governing myself—when I must obey what other people decide even if I think it wrong?’”(33). Drowkin argues that freedom can’t be maintained in a procedural democracy where the majority, or at least some fraction of the population, decides the rules by which others must behave. If our freedom can’t be preserved, as we are at the whim of others, how can a government legitimate force?

This seems related to the point Fiona raised about dependency a citizen might have in Kant’s system of government. Brettschneider argues that this outcome is not the product of self-government, and then not really undemocratic. To achieve self-government, there must be “substantive rights to legitimate treatment, even if they contradict the laws passed by those procedures” or a ‘moral membership’ (34). Without this moral membership, and only a procedural model of democratic rights, the sovereignty of the individual is diminished. So it seems that Brettschneider and Fiona have similar worries that a procedural attitude toward rights can lead to a tarnished individual freedom. To mitigate this problem Brettschneider asserts “the addressee of the law has rights guaranteeing that the law will not undermine her sovereign status” (34).