The Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law is delighted to host Professor Daniel Weinstock for the second workshop in the 2024/25 KJuris programme.

Title

The Unrealized Promise of Subsidiarity

Abstract

Subsidiarity is an oft-cited concept in the context of the institutional design of power-sharing arrangements. It has in particular been repeatedly invoked both by theorists and practitioners in the design of the institutions of the European Union. My argument in this talk is that subsidiarity, in the present state of discussion in political philosophy and in law, the concept of subsidiarity is incomplete. It is incomplete in at least four ways. First, it fails to provide us with a satisfactory theory of the normative pressures that, for any policy decision, militate for that decision to be taken at a "higher" or "lower" level in the decision-making pyramid. Second, it fails to provide us with the relevant authorities that ought to be included as potential decision-makers. Third, it says nothing about how the policy domains to which the principle ought to be applied are individuated. And fourth, it does not in and of itself include a view as to how disputes concerning the application of subsidiarity ought to be resolved. In this paper I will attempt to fill in some detail as to how this incompleteness with respect to these four questions might be filled in. When they are, I will suggest, they lead to conclusions that might be more radical than its exponents have imagined.

Author Bio

Daniel Weinstock holds the Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and Public Policy at McGill University, where he has appointments in Law, Philosophy, The Max Bell School of Public Policy, and the School for Population and Global Health. His work has spanned broadly across a wide range of topics, with emphasis on the normative challenges posed by the growing diversity of modern liberal democracies, the foundations of health policy and, most recently, the philosophical questions arising in the choice and design of electoral systems.

About KJuris

Directed by Professor Massimo Renzo and Doctor Todd Karhu, King's Legal Philosophy Workshop Series, KJuris, is a forum devoted to discussing works in progress by today's leading legal philosophers and theorists as well as by promising younger talents from around the world. While our focus is philosophical and jurisprudential, we construe these terms broadly and welcome all rigorous methodological approaches to legal theory.