Law, Politics, and Morality: European Perspectives I

How different cultural groups can be made to live together in justice and fairness in one common political entity has in the past been discussed almost exclusively from the perspective of nation-states. In an increasingly globalising or de-nationalising world, this no longer seems adequate.

The European Union, as a union of states and with an-built expansive tendency, is a very different, unique kind of organization, offering a challenging new context for the discussion of how social justice can be ensured in multicultural societies. As debates in the post-Maastricht era show, the European process of regional integration needs to be accompanied by profound reflexions on issues such as multiculturalism, democratic legitimacy, and the idea of citizenship. In three sections, on Globalisation and Multiculturalism, Deliberation and Democracy, and Citizenship and the European Union, this book offers such reflexions, formulated by young European legal and political philosophers, from England, Estonia, France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.

The papers were discussed at a conference held in November 2001 in Tossa de Mar/Spain. This was the first of three "PhD EuroConferences in Legal Philosophy" sponsored by the Commission of the European Union. The papers of the other two conferences (Nov. 2002, Gerona/Spain; Nov. 2003, Genoa/Italy) are forthcoming in this collection.