Critical Encounters with Habermas’s Political and Legal Theory

John Abromeit is Professor of History at SUNY, Buffalo State, the author of Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (2011), and the co-editor of several volumes, including: Siegfried Kracauer: Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda and Political Communication (2022).Matthew Dimick is Professor of Law and Director of the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo School of Law, and the author of Ending Income Inequality (2025). His research addresses the law and political economy of income inequality, capitalism and the administrative state, and the historical epistemology of race and employment discrimination law.Paul Linden-Retek is Associate Professor of Law, University at Buffalo School of Law. He writes and teaches in the areas of constitutional law, international human rights, and critical legal theory, with an emphasis on comparative law, European Union law, and refugee law.

• Notes on Contributors Notes on Editors 1 Introduction: the Pasts and Futures of Between Facts and Norms – a Critical Exchange John Abromeit, Matthew Dimick and Paul Linden-RetekPart 1: BFN and the Challenge of Neoliberalism and Political Economy2 Historicizing Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms: a Critique from the Perspective of Early Frankfurt School Critical Theory John Abromeit 3 Between Facts and Norms at 30: Habermas, Neoliberalism and Radical Democracy Brian Caterino and Phillip Hansen 4 What’s Left? Democratic Theory in Between Facts and Norms after Three Decades William E. Scheuerman 5 How the Legal Form Distorts Public and Private Autonomy Matthew Dimick 6 Why Proceduralism Is Not Enough: Reading Habermas in an Age of Democratic Decline Michael J. ThompsonPart 2: BFN and Political (and Legal) Theory7 Democratic Theory’s Existential Crisis: between Discourse and Partisan Empowerment David Ingram 8 Is Democratic Legitimacy Purely Procedural? An Institutional Account of the Legitimacy of Democratic Decision-Making Cristina Lafont 9 In Search of Counter-Tendencies: on the Heuristic Potential of the Public Sphere in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms  Rúrion Melo 10 Between Facts and Norms Facing Pseudo-Democracy Isabelle Aubert 11 Policing the Public Sphere Erin R. Pineda 12 A Great Misrecognition: How Between Facts and Norms Was Conflated with (but Resists) the Cosmopolitan Moment in 1990s International Relations Theory Matthew Specter 13 Afterword: the Specter of Popular Sovereignty in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms   After Three Decades Seyla Benhabib