Legitimacy of Institutions, Not Laws.

The paper argues that arguments in democratic theory about legitimacy should focus on the political legitimacy of the institutions of lawmaking, and not on legal legitimacy or the legitimacy of rules and statutes. Political legitimacy obtains in political institutions which enact and enforce laws, and the search for political legitimacy is an expression of concern about the application of coercive state power. The search for legitimacy is an analysis foremost of political institutions and not of the content of laws. Political illegitimacy persists to the extent that institutions of lawmaking are lack moral authorization to apply coercive power. Controversial laws remain controversial to the extent that they are subject to disagreement about justice. That a state acts legitimately in enforcing a law should not in any way be seen as appropriately curtailing debate about the justice of that law. Under the best conditions (which may be a far cry from good conditions), though, the state will have to coerce coordination on that legal norm even in the face of continuing disagreement about the justice of the norm. We should not describe such a state of affairs as state enforcement of a legitimate law. We should describe it as the legitimate enforcement of a controversial law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]