Karwan Osmani

My project concerns the place of democracy in a free-market liberal order. How are we to understand the tensions, in liberal legal orders, between commitments to market liberalism and commitments to liberal and social democracy? Are commitments to liberal and social democracy as theoretically and institutionally articulated as commitments to economic liberalism in the liberal tradition? I think these questions can be fruitfully analyzed through the study of contemporary liberal legal institutions; and through the study of constitutional liberalism as a theoretical and practical tradition. Analysis of contemporary liberal legal institutions and of the liberal constitutional tradition are then my two focal points in the project.

In addition, I am also interested in general questions of theory and method. Methodological and theoretical innovation reorganizes the field of the perceptible; it redefines what (and who) can be seen and what (and who) can be heard (i.e. what can qualify as speech, and not merely as prepolitical noise), and is therefore a worthwhile pursuit. It also cuts right through to the relation between what is generically common to the species, which is the precondition for every act of production of meaning, and the singular. The jurist tries to bridge the chasm between norm and application, generality and singularity; and methodological investigations are exercises in clarifying the relation between the generic and the individual, the abilities common to the species and the singular. Thinking about method and theory are also for this reason of value to the jurist.