ABSTRACT
When I was asked to write an essay that might serve as a basis for a conversation about ‘relativism and universalism in moral, political and legal judgments’, it was suggested that I address the following question:
Although we have all learned much from contemporary historicist and social-constructivist perspectives, recent events have forced us to ask with renewed urgency if there are moral truths of a universal, or at least highly stable, kind upon which moral, political, and legal judgments can be made and justified for the purposes of public deliberations and decisions.1
