The Global Model of Constitutional Rights: A Response to Afonso da Silva, Harel, and Porat

The issues and criticisms that Virgílio Afonso da Silva, Alon Harel, and Iddo Porat raise about The Global Model of Constitutional Rights¹ relate, first, to its methodology (in particular the nature of my theory as morally reconstructive, and its global character), secondly, to the role of autonomy (in particular its relation to equality, and my defence of a general right to autonomy), and thirdly, to the problem of justification (outcome-based versus excluded reasons-based ways of reasoning about questions of rights). Correspondingly, I divide this response into three sections, dealing with the methodological questions in the first, with the autonomy-related issues in the second, and with the problem of justification in the final section.

...

Any morally reconstructive theory is Janus-headed: it looks both to fit with the practice and to moral value. Thus, a morally reconstructive theory of the global model of constitutional rights must meet two criteria: first, it...