Democratic dialogue, multiculturalism and “public wrongs”

Abstract

In this work, I challenge some of the ideas presented by Antony Duff’s in his book The Realm of Criminal Law and, more particularly, his approach to the idea of “public wrongs.” I claim that his views on the subject unjustifiably put into question some shared ideas about what it means to live in a democratic and multicultural society. More particularly, I maintain that, in multicultural societies, we define the basic elements of our identities in dialogue with different and “significant others,” which –I submit- makes it difficult to identify public wrongs that are –in his words- “clearly inconsistent with… any remotely plausible conception of civil order”. In my opinion, many of the problems that I find in his views originate in Duff’s implausible understanding of democracy: the “voice of the community” –I claim– can and should only be expressed by the community itself, through an ongoing and unending collective conversation.