The question of how communities may author their own laws, thereby manifesting autonomy (“self-legislation”), arises throughout the history of political thought. In Democratic Law, her Berkeley Tanner Lectures, Seana Valentine Shiffrin offers a distinguished contribution to this long inquiry: she argues that law’s value within democratic societies rests on its communicative capacity, enabling citizens to express their recognition of each other’s equal status.Following an insightful introduction by editor Hannah Ginsborg, Shiffrin’s first lecture, “Democratic Law,” provides the philosophical groundwork for the rest of the volume. Shiffrin characterizes democracy as a system that treats its members with equal concern and respect, and one that enables its citizens to serve as the “equal and exclusive co-authors” of its legal norms and directives (20). Law plays a distinctive and crucial role on this account because it allows us to identify and to communicate our shared moral commitments. Foremost among these joint commitments is that members are due equal recognition of their status as citizens (51) and each of us must intend to convey respect for each other as equal comembers (31). We cannot do so severally, given the scope of the community, but neither can we satisfy our obligation merely by endorsing or complying with existing norms (31–32, 38). Rather, “each of us needs to perform (and receive) a form of communicative action that enacts and thereby expresses our commitment to the respectful treatment that each of us merits as a moral equal and a joint member of our social cooperative venture” (39). Shiffrin argues that law—quotidian or constitutional, common or statutory—is the central means of discharging this communicative duty.The second half of the volume features two lectures on legal applications, “Democratic Law and the Erosion of Common Law” and “Constitutional Balancing and State Interests.” The former focuses on what might seem to be a minor, technical Supreme Court decision concerning frequent-flier programs, yet Shiffrin persuasively argues that it raises far-reaching concerns about the nature of public commitments. The question in Northwest, Inc. v. Ginsberg is whether a federal statute, the Airline Deregulation Act, preempts a state rule of common law by which parties to a contract have an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Shiffrin objects to Justice Alito’s opinion for a unanimous court in Ginsberg for two main reasons. First, it wrongly characterizes the duty of good faith and fair dealing as subject to preemption, as a form of state action around which the parties could not contract, rather than characterizing the duty as pertaining to the underlying meaning of voluntary agreements (74–75). By incorporating a duty of good faith into contract law, a democratic society expresses the value of keeping commitments to each other, and that respect for each other as citizens means not deliberately acting to undermine the purpose of the agreements we form. Second, Justice Alito’s opinion, which treats statutory and common law as effectively identical for the purposes of the preemption provision in the ADA, neglects the distinctive value of the common law as a form of “collective moral articulation” (84). As Shiffrin notes, the Supreme Court has recently expanded the scope of federal preemption, displacing the development and articulation of common law. Since such evolution primarily takes place in state courts (especially with respect to contract law), preemption of the common law undermines the development of the “local social-moral culture” (87).In the third lecture, Shiffrin turns to “constitutional balancing,” by which a court weighs constitutional interests against state interests. She raises the important question of what it means for the state to have an interest at all, not merely whether such interest is sufficiently compelling to be balanced against the constitutional interests at stake. Here she expresses particular concerns about the invocation of “discretionary interests,” those which a state actor may entertain or promote but is not required to advance, as opposed to “mandatory interests.” She considers whether the mere identification of a discretionary interest on the part of a state suffices to establish that a state does in fact have such an interest for the purpose of constitutional balancing, and answers in the negative: a state must demonstrate a commitment to this interest, developed in a purposive and coherent fashion over time, for it to merit weight on a balancing test. Evidence of the “strength and sincerity” of the state’s interest must be provided (122), potentially requiring a showing that a state has adopted a serious approach to securing the interest, including answering the charge that the state has taken measures apparently at odds with an asserted interest (in her example, a state claiming an unqualified interest in preserving life so as to prohibit assisted suicide could not simultaneously allow the death penalty [103]).Characteristically for Shiffrin, these lectures are all beautifully argued. Likely due to the lecture genre, though, Shiffrin does not really situate her concept of coauthorship within the existing literature on group agency, joint commitment, and shared intentions. There is considerable philosophical work on these topics, and scholars, notably including Philip Pettit (2012), have in recent years profitably developed its implications for democracy. Political theorists have turned to Michael Bratman (1999) and Margaret Gilbert (1996) to characterize dimensions of the democratic process as a joint intentional practice, including Anna Stilz (2009) on the value of the state, Josiah Ober (2017) on collective self-government, Emilee Booth Chapman (2022) on elections, and Eric Beerbohm (2012), who specifically invokes joint intentional authorship to explain individuals’ complicity in injustice. Shiffrin’s contribution is distinctive among these accounts in part due to its quite demanding characterization of coauthorship, made more plausible by the stipulation that she argues from the standpoint of ideal theory, asking “what role democracy and law would play in a state whose institutions otherwise manifest features of material and intellectual forms of justice and whose citizens largely endorse the principles of justice and their instantiation” (20).One natural worry is that because Shiffrin’s account of joint authorship presupposes a shared endorsement of the principles of justice, it might mean that the joint commitment in fact occurs at this earlier stage rather than through the activity of legislation, or that the communicative act of lawmaking merely redescribes that endorsement. So the second and third lectures—in nonideal theory—should respond to this concern by demonstrating how contemporary democracies such as the United States, who fall short of such conditions, could still enable coauthorship, if imperfectly. Here some difficulties arise.To begin, in the first lecture, Shiffrin argues that for law to be democratic, the “terms of that participation must themselves be equal, under some salient description, or else the message will not be each of ours and the participatory structure will belie at least part of the message of our mutual equality” (39). Yet in lectures 2 and 3, Shiffrin shifts to treating participation on equal terms as inessential, raising some challenges for the coherence of the argument overall.Shiffrin’s interlocutors note this problem. Like other Tanner Lecture volumes, the book features commentaries: in this case, excellent contributions from philosopher Niko Kolodny, legal scholar Richard R. W. Brooks, and political theorist Anna Stilz. Kolodny and Stilz both raise the objection—inter alia—that although Shiffrin insists that participation in the creation of democratic law requires that each of us have an opportunity to participate for the communication to be ours and publicly so (or else the message will not be each of ours), she does not require us to have an equal say. As Kolodny points out, we are asked to communicate equal standing, and doing so seems to matter very greatly for the moral lives of our members, as their self-respect depends on it. If we do not need to do so through an equal say, then the process would seem to compromise the content—as, per Kolodny’s piquant example, in the manufacture of a MAGA hat abroad (139). Stilz presses Shiffrin on how apparently inegalitarian institutions such as judge-made common law can satisfy the egalitarian communicative duty (174–76). Like Kolodny, she takes up the issue of whether egalitarian participation rights are fundamental to democratic communication and asks what connection the common law has to such rights, in part given its origins in the nondemocratic domain of twelfth-century England.Evading these worries places Shiffrin in the difficult position of defending the common law as a more effective means than statutes for each of us to communicate equal status. In her second lecture, Shiffrin contrasts the common law favorably with “many manifestations of the legislative process” (84); she argues that whereas the legislature may be subject to capture by interest groups and disproportionately responsive to larger and better organized groups, the “common law process embodies a judicial manifestation of the equal importance of each citizen, a process less sensitive to affiliation and social power than many manifestations of the legislative process” (84). This is a surprising assertion, one far more consistent with Ronald Dworkin’s (1986: 238–39) vision of Hercules—an “author in the chain of common law” —than a robust defense of democratic coauthorship. The claim that social power plays a lesser role in contract litigation than in legislation is contestable: litigation is costly, litigants with greater resources are often advantaged in an adversarial context, and surely the development of the common law in state courts of appeal depends on litigants who can bear those material and transaction costs and who may be able to delay settlement. Moreover, judges themselves tend to possess significant social power, certainly relative to many state legislators.More seriously, taking Stilz’s argument a step further, if forced to locate myself as a coauthor either of the common law of contracts or of a statute, it is hard to imagine choosing the former. (Shifflin would maintain that one need not actually choose, and that I should equally see myself in both.) A state court of appeals judge (elected or appointed) resolves a breach of contract dispute between private parties unknown to me and issues a judgment on, say, “lack of privity,” an unfamiliar concept; the case receives no media attention. By contrast, statutes emerge from a public legislative process; even if certain bills are little noticed, representatives facing competitive, partisan elections can anticipate that they will be held accountable for their votes. Now, one might argue—reasonably, in my view—that neither plausibly meets the standards of coauthorship, but it is hard to argue that the displacement of the common law of states through federal preemption poses a worse affront to citizens as coauthors than having their state legislation struck down by the Supreme Court. Indeed, Shiffrin expressly argues in the second lecture that “local and state governments may have a special significance for communicative approaches” through the creation of law by a community “powerful enough to generate a distinctive identity and camaraderie between citizens” (67). If preemption through federal legislation may threaten these communicative aims, so too might a sweeping role for federal courts in scrutinizing the depth of citizens’ commitments, as Shiffrin defends in the third lecture.Given that state legislatures would seem to be main forums for the articulation of local norms—a domain in which one could most plausibly ascribe coauthorship to citizens—it is surprising how little deference Shiffrin is willing to afford them. Brooks characterizes Shiffrin’s objection as a worry about cheap talk, in which a state can evince commitment to a discretionary interest without incurring costs in so doing (162); the aim is to raise the price of such communication by insisting that it must be backed up by prior investments. Brooks proposes that one might reasonably presume that state actors could speak authentically when representing interests, and he intimates that such a presumption might be necessary for state action to preserve the communicative value that Shiffrin seeks to ascribe to it (163). Alternatively, he suggests that bringing the interests of speaker and addressee into alignment can help to make cheap talk credible, and so here he recommends “focusing on the democratically representative institutions that promote the interests of agents” (164). Both of these proposals seem warranted insofar as we want to secure conditions of authorship.Yet Shiffrin insists that we cannot take legislators’ word for it: whatever the support for these norms within their community, if these laws merely manifest new discretionary interests (departing from the status quo), and if state actors cannot demonstrate the consistency of such interests throughout the fabric of their law to the satisfaction of courts, they ought to enjoy little weight on balance. Put differently, if a state seeks to act as a laboratory for legislative experimentation, citizens must insure that Bunsen burners are lit beneath all laws that might reflect related interests, lest such an interest be dismissed as fleeting or pretextual.And citizens can have no complaint when their commitments are dismissed as shallow. In the first lecture, Shiffrin is willing to defend the value of voting in elections as a means of how “I, as a co-author, should contribute to the joint deliberation about and determination of the particular form that commitment should take (whether directly, as with a referendum, or indirectly, when we elect agents who themselves offer a concrete vision of how to make our joint commitment more determinate)” (53–54). But by the end of the volume, in her reply to commentators, Shiffrin characterizes elections and referenda as in fact failing to satisfy the communicative requirements because of the absence of reason-giving: “judicial institutions … permit participation by citizens that is dramatically more articulate and … produce results that are dramatically more articulate than elections” (213–14).It would seem, then, that most of us will remain silent coauthors. Because Shiffrin briefly draws an analogy to joint academic writing (22), please forgive a final observation that, if this can count as coauthorship, my h-index really should be much higher.

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民主法

社区如何制定自己的法律，从而体现自主性（“自我立法”）的问题贯穿整个政治思想史。在她的伯克利坦纳讲座《民主法》中，西娜·瓦伦丁·希夫林 (Seana Valentine Shiffrin) 对这一长期探究做出了杰出贡献：她认为，民主社会中法律的价值取决于其沟通能力，使公民能够表达对彼此平等地位的认可。编辑汉娜·金斯伯格 (Hannah Ginsborg) 的介绍是，希夫林的第一讲《民主法》为本书的其余部分提供了哲学基础。希夫林将民主描述为一种平等关心和尊重其成员的制度，并且使公民能够成为其法律规范和指令的“平等和排他的共同制定者”（20）。法律在这方面发挥着独特而关键的作用，因为它使我们能够识别并传达我们共同的道德承诺。这些共同承诺中最重要的是，成员应平等地承认自己作为公民的地位（51），并且我们每个人都必须作为平等的成员表达对彼此的尊重（31）。考虑到社区的范围，我们不能单独这样做，但我们也不能仅仅通过认可或遵守现有规范来履行我们的义务（31-32、38）。相反，“我们每个人都需要执行（并接受）某种形式的沟通行动，以制定并由此表达我们对尊重对待的承诺，这是我们每个人作为道德平等者和社会合作企业的共同成员应得的”（39 ）。希夫林认为，法律——日常的或宪法的、普通的或法定的——是履行这种沟通义务的核心手段。本书的后半部分有两场关于法律应用的讲座，“民主法和普通法的侵蚀”和“宪法平衡”和国家利益。” 前者关注的是最高法院关于常旅客计划的一项看似微不足道的技术性裁决，但希夫林令人信服地认为，它引起了人们对公共承诺性质的深远担忧。西北公司诉金斯伯格一案的问题是，联邦法规《航空公司放松管制法》是否优先于州普通法规则，根据普通法，合同双方默示了善意和公平交易的契约。希夫林反对阿利托法官对金斯伯格法院提出的一致意见，主要有两个原因。首先，它将善意和公平交易的义务错误地描述为可优先考虑的义务，作为一种当事人无法缔约的国家行动形式，而不是将该义务描述为与自愿协议的基本含义有关（74-75） ）。通过将诚信义务纳入合同法，民主社会体现了相互信守承诺的价值，作为公民相互尊重意味着不故意采取行动破坏我们达成的协议的目的。其次，阿利托大法官的观点认为，就《美国残疾人法》中优先购买权条款而言，成文法和普通法实际上是相同的，忽视了普通法作为“集体道德表达”形式的独特价值（84）。正如希夫林指出的那样，最高法院最近扩大了联邦优先购买权的范围，取代了普通法的发展和阐述。由于这种演变主要发生在州法院（特别是在合同法方面），普通法的优先地位破坏了“当地社会道德文化”的发展（87）。在第三讲中，希夫林转向“宪法平衡” ”，法院通过该规则权衡宪法利益与国家利益。她提出了一个重要问题：国家拥有利益意味着什么，而不仅仅是这种利益是否足以与所涉宪法利益相平衡。在这里，她对援引“自由裁量利益”表示特别担忧，即国家行为者可以考虑或促进但不需要推进的利益，而不是“强制性利益”。她认为，仅仅确定一个国家的自由裁量利益是否足以证明一个国家确实拥有出于宪政平衡目的的这种利益，并给出了否定的答案：一个国家必须表现出对此的承诺。随着时间的推移，以有目的和连贯的方式发展起来的兴趣，使其在平衡测试中值得重视。必须提供国家利益“实力和诚意”的证据（122），可能需要证明国家已采取认真的方法来保护利益，包括回应关于国家采取的措施显然与国家利益相悖的指控。一种声称的利益（在她的例子中，一个国家声称对保护生命有无限制的利益，以禁止协助自杀，但不能同时允许死刑[103]）。希夫林的特点是，这些讲座都经过精彩的论证。不过，可能是由于讲座类型的原因，希夫林并没有真正将她的合著者概念置于现有的关于团体代理、共同承诺和共同意图的文献中。关于这些主题有大量的哲学工作，学者们，尤其是菲利普·佩蒂特（Philip Pettit，2012），近年来已经成功地发展了其对民主的影响。政治理论家转向迈克尔·布拉特曼（Michael Bratman，1999）和玛格丽特·吉尔伯特（Margaret Gilbert，1996）将民主进程的各个维度描述为一种共同有意的实践，包括安娜·斯蒂尔茨（Anna Stilz，2009）关于国家价值的观点，乔赛亚·奥伯（Josiah Ober，2017）关于集体自我的观点。 -政府，Emilee Booth Chapman (2022) 关于选举，以及 Eric Beerbohm (2012)，他特别援引共同故意作者身份来解释个人在不公正行为中的共谋。希夫林的贡献在这些叙述中是独特的，部分原因在于它对合著者身份的描述相当严格，她从理想理论的角度论证的规定变得更加合理，她询问“民主和法律在一个其机构以其他方式表现出来的国家中将发挥什么作用”正义的物质和智力形式的特征，其公民在很大程度上认可正义原则及其实例化”（20）。一个自然的担忧是，由于希夫林对共同作者的描述预设了对正义原则的共同认可，这可能意味着事实上，共同承诺是在这个早期阶段发生的，而不是通过立法活动，或者立法的沟通行为只是重新描述了这种认可。因此，第二讲和第三讲——在非理想理论中——应该通过展示美国等不具备这些条件的当代民主国家如何仍然能够实现共同作者（即使不完美）来回应这种担忧。这里出现了一些困难。 首先，在第一堂课中，希夫林认为，要使法律民主化，“在某种显着的描述下，参与的条件本身必须是平等的，否则信息将不会是我们每个人和整个社会的信息”。参与结构至少会掩盖我们相互平等的信息的一部分”（39）。然而，在第二讲和第三讲中，希夫林转向将平等参与视为无关紧要，这对整体论点的连贯性提出了一些挑战。希夫林的对话者注意到了这个问题。与坦纳讲座的其他卷一样，这本书也有评论：在这本书中，哲学家尼科·科洛德尼、法律学者理查德·RW·布鲁克斯和政治理论家安娜·斯蒂尔茨做出了出色的贡献。科洛德尼和斯蒂尔茨都提出了反对意见——除其他外——尽管希夫林坚持认为，参与民主法律的制定要求我们每个人都有机会参与，让沟通成为我们自己的并公开进行（否则信息就不会被传播）。我们每个人），她并不要求我们有平等的发言权。正如科洛德尼指出的那样，我们被要求传达平等的地位，这样做似乎对我们成员的道德生活非常重要，因为他们的自尊取决于此。如果我们不需要通过平等的发言权来做到这一点，那么这个过程似乎会损害内容——就像科洛德尼辛辣的例子一样，在国外制造一顶 MAGA 帽子 (139)。斯蒂尔茨向希夫林施压，要求他了解法官制定的普通法等明显不平等的制度如何能够满足平等主义的沟通义务（174-76）。和科洛德尼一样，她探讨了平等参与权是否是民主沟通的基础的问题，并询问普通法与这些权利有什么联系，部分原因是它起源于十二世纪英国的非民主领域。回避这些担忧使希弗林陷入了困境，他要捍卫普通法，因为普通法是比成文法更有效的手段，可以让我们每个人传达平等地位。在她的第二次演讲中，希夫林将普通法与“立法程序的许多表现形式”进行了积极的对比（84）；她认为，尽管立法机关可能会受到利益集团的控制，并对规模更大、组织更好的群体做出不成比例的反应，但“普通法程序体现了每个公民平等重要性的司法体现，是一个对隶属关系和社会权力不太敏感的过程”。比立法过程的许多表现形式更重要”（84）。这是一个令人惊讶的断言，与罗纳德·德沃金（Ronald Dworkin，1986：238-39）对赫拉克勒斯（“普通法链条中的作者”）的愿景更加一致，而不是对民主合著权的有力辩护。关于社会权力在合同诉讼中的作用小于立法中的作用的说法是有争议的：诉讼成本高昂，拥有更多资源的诉讼当事人往往在对抗性背景下占据优势，而且州上诉法院普通法的发展当然取决于诉讼当事人谁可以承担这些材料和交易成本，谁可以延迟结算。此外，法官本身往往拥有重要的社会权力，当然相对于许多州立法者而言。更严肃地说，进一步考虑斯蒂尔茨的论点，如果被迫将自己定位为普通合同法或成文法的共同作者，那么很难想象选择前者。（希夫林会坚持认为，人们实际上不需要选择，而且我应该在两者中平等地看待自己。）州上诉法院法官（当选或任命）解决了我不知道的私人当事人之间的违约纠纷，并对，比如“缺乏私密性”，这是一个陌生的概念；此案没有受到媒体关注。相比之下，法规产生于公共立法程序；即使某些法案很少受到关注，面临竞争性党派选举的代表也可以预见到他们将对其选票负责。现在，有人可能会争辩说——在我看来，这是合理的——两者都不太符合合著者的标准，但很难说，通过联邦优先权取代各州的普通法，对作为合著者的公民来说，比让他们的合着者更严重地侮辱了公民。州立法被最高法院推翻。事实上，希夫林在第二讲中明确指出，“地方和州政府可能对沟通方法具有特殊的意义”，通过“强大到足以在公民之间产生独特的身份和友情”的社区制定法律（67）。如果联邦立法的先发制人可能会威胁到这些沟通目标，正如希弗林在第三讲中所辩护的那样，联邦法院在审查公民承诺的深度方面也可能发挥广泛的作用。鉴于州立法机构似乎是阐明地方规范的主要论坛——在这个领域，人们最有可能貌似合理地将共同作者归于公民——令人惊讶的是希夫林愿意给予他们如此少的尊重。布鲁克斯将希弗林的反对意见描述为对廉价言论的担忧，即国家可以在不产生成本的情况下表明对酌情利益的承诺（162）；其目的是通过坚持必须有先前投资的支持来提高此类通信的价格。布鲁克斯提出，人们可以合理地假设国家行为者在代表利益时可以真实地说话，他暗示这种假设对于国家行动可能是必要的，以保持希夫林试图赋予其的沟通价值（163）。或者，他建议使说话者和收件人的利益保持一致有助于使廉价言论变得可信，因此他在这里建议“关注促进代理人利益的民主代表机构”（164）。就我们想要确保作者身份的条件而言，这两个提议似乎都是有道理的。然而希夫林坚持认为，我们不能相信立法者的话：无论他们的社区内对这些规范的支持如何，如果这些法律仅仅体现了新的自由裁量利益（背离了现状），如果国家行为者不能在其整个法律结构中证明这些利益的一致性，从而使法院满意，那么他们应该享有很少的权重。换句话说，如果一个州试图充当立法实验的实验室，公民必须确保本生灯在所有可能反映相关利益的法律下点燃，以免此类利益被视为短暂或借口而被驳回。公民不能有任何抱怨当他们的承诺被视为肤浅而被驳回时。在第一堂课中，希夫林愿意捍卫选举中投票的价值，以此作为“我作为合著者，应该如何为共同审议和确定承诺应采取的特定形式做出贡献（无论是直接还是间接）的一种手段”。 ，就像公投一样，或者间接地，当我们选举代理人时，他们本身就如何使我们的共同承诺更加确定提供了具体的愿景）”（53-54）。但在本书的最后，希夫林在对评论员的回复中将选举和全民公投描述为事实上未能满足沟通要求，因为缺乏给出理由：“司法机构......允许公民以更加明确的方式参与并且......产生比选举更加清晰的结果”（213-14）。那么，我们大多数人似乎将保持沉默的共同作者。