Diskurs als Rechtsquelle?

The discourse theory of law is one of those concepts which have received considerable attention in the current discussion on the philosophy of law. The central hypothesis of this is that laws and judicial decisions have to be shown as justifiable in a discourse. Armin Engländer gives an in-depth criticism of this viewpoint. He demonstrates in detail that the basic linguistic assumptions have not been substantiated convincingly and that central elements of modern constitutional states, such as for example subjective rights of freedom, cannot be justified adequately from the standpoint of the discourse theory.