ABSTRACT
Jurgen Habermas has recently developed a more systematic version of his Kantian cosmopolitan project in a multilevel ‘politically constituted world society'. In order to understand Habermas' contribution to debates surrounding international law, it is helpful to consider the development of his views on this issue over the last two decades. Consider the Kantian claim that the goals of the international system and of republican states are mutually reinforcing, such that law is the solution to the problem of peace, since constitutionalization moves the state away from the self-defeating attempt to secure non-domination at home by pursuing domination abroad. If the success of the new emerging constitutionalization is to legitimate cosmopolitan democracy through its capacity to promote freedom, it can do so only if extant normative conceptions of democracy are no longer univocal across the various levels of world society.
