‘Oh, but you should have’: Estlund on Normative Consent

Democratic Authority is a tour de force. Among its considerable virtues, David Estlund’s book manages to introduce genuinely new and plainly important ideas on well-worn topics right at the heart of modern political philosophy. Indeed, it does so not once, but several times. In this discussion, I shall concentrate on just one of those ideas, the idea of ‘normative consent’. Estlund offers his idea as a novel justification of political authority— ultimately, as a justification for the authority of democracies. But, officially, the justification is structured as an argument by analogy, with the analogy running from the authority of a jury system to the authority of a democracy. Accordingly, I shall focus here on Estlund’s point of departure: the normative consent justification for the authority of a jury system. Not only does this narrower focus contain all the essential points that need to be considered, but it also absorbs the bulk of Estlund’s own attention in chapter 8.