Now out: The Alexy-Poscher Debate on Legal Principles

Legal debate published as book

Robert Alexy and Ralf Poscher—two renowned legal scholars specializing in public law—are engaged in an academic debate on the understanding of legal principles and the role of courts in their application. The book “The Alexy-Poscher Debate on Legal Principles” has now been published, reconstructing this debate in chronological order.

At the heart of the controversy lies the interpretation of constitutional rights, with major implications for proportionality analysis and the contentious use of the balancing test by apex courts around the world.

Alexy argues in his principles theory – which initially defined ‘legal principles’ as optimization requirements – that they now express an ‘ideal ought’. Poscher’s critique challenges the soundness of Alexy’s principles theory by questioning its ontological and epistemological commitments.

As legal principles are directly related to constitutional rights, the Alexy-Poscher debate has significant implications for constitutional adjudication. For instance, proportionality analysis – which incor­po­rates a highly controversial balancing test – and the legitimate boundaries of judicial power hinge on the debate’s two opposing views. Yet, despite the centrality and pervasiveness of this topic, German contributions to the theoretical and practical impact of legal principles remain generally overlooked by English-speaking scholars.

Concluding with David Duarte’s critical and meticulous analysis of the debate, this collection bridges an important scholarly gap. Regardless of one’s level of expertise in the debate on legal principles, legal re­search­ers and advanced law students with interdisciplinary interests in jurisprudence and constitutional law will find in this book a timely and insightful introduction to leading developments in German legal thinking.

---

Authors:

Robert Alexy, Professor of Public Law and Legal Philosophy at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Germany.

Ralf Poscher, Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, Germany.

Anthology Editor:

Rafael Giorgio Dalla-Barba, Doctoral Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, Germany.

Conclusion:

David Duarte, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal.

For more information, please visit www.bloomsbury.com.