Populism: Perspectives from Legal Philosophy

The recent advent of right-wing populism poses a challenge to the rule of law, democracy and liberal values such as freedom, equality and tolerance. Naturally, this led to an intense academic discussion. However, the majority of relevant publications looks at populism from the point of view of political theory. Philosophers and legal scholars have largely remained bystanders in this debate. This volume analyzes the populist challenges from the perspective of legal philosophy. It focusses on liberal democratic values, structures and procedures. It complements the populism debate in political theory by emphasizing the normative challenges of populism and the responses it warrants. As the contributions to this volume show, populism is not only directed against the formal structures of democratic constitutional states, but also undermines their informal elements such as the political culture, democratic ethos, truthfulness, and other elements necessary for the realization of the rule of law. The contributions discuss means to meet the populist challenges, including the revival of the political as well as a critical and reflected liberalism. These analyses are then illustrated by case studies of the particular populisms in Italy, Brazil and Turkey.