Abstract

SILVA, Felipe Gonçalves. Between potentials and communication blocks: Habermas and the critique of the democratic rule of law. Cad. CRH [online]. 2011, vol.24, n.62, pp. 307-330. ISSN 0103-4979.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0103-49792011000200006.

For Habermas, a critical understanding of the democratic rule of law is not made merely with the denunciation of its many failures. It is about investigating them as blocks to its true potentialities. Thus, in Law and Democracy, the author tries to reconstruct the procedural conditions against which a process of radical democratization can move, putting the key elements of the democratic rule of law to a discursive model of critical theory, which turns to the use of a comunicative potentialities released in modernity. Starting from the lins of Law And Democracy to the critical theory of society, this paper aims to clarify the particular traits of the critical model there developed, as well as highlight some of its characteristic limitations.

Keywords : Habermas; democracy; rule of law; critical theory; proceduralism.