ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a line of critique that questions the basis of the concept of liberal democratic states, namely its sovereignty, founded on the idea of legal centralism. It argues that the conception of legitimacy ultimately presupposes either a shared understanding of the common good or the validity of moral claims as such. The chapter focuses on presumed moral laws; there has to be a plurality of legal entities because every moral or cultural community is inherently valuable. Paul Gowder shares one important element of critique with the pluralists, namely that the rule of law as a principle of mere formal generality is blind to the effects legal norms may have on different groups of people. Political freedom both in the centralistic and the pluralistic perspective can be linked to the concept of political self-determination. There are strong implications for the question of legal changes, if the pluralistic model is right.
