ABSTRACT
A central element of Habermas’s discourse theory of law is his procedural paradigm. This includes a procedural understanding of basic rights, which is supposed to resolve both the classical tension between basic rights and democracy and the problem of collision between basic rights. I try to show that the procedural paradigm can do the first only at the cost of inadmissible idealization. Under realistic conditions one can only attempt to institutionalize the tension between basic rights and democracy as rationally as possible. Also, the problem of collision of basic rights cannot really be solved by the procedural paradigm. What can be substantiated is merely a prima facie priority of participation in the process of public opinion- and will-formation over merely private activities. Whether this prima facie priority becomes a definite priority in a concrete case or group of cases depends on the weight of counterarguments, as to which the procedural paradigm is silent.
