Enduring Contingency

Abstract

Van der Walt, in my reading, suggests that enduring contingency, in the twofold sense of an enduring state of contingency and of contingency as what needs to be endured, justifies the central role of the majority/minority principle in liberal democratic law. Does this endorsement of the principle go far enough in addressing the radical challenge of contingency? What about those cases in which a group refuses to understand itself as a disaffected minority in conflict with a majority, hence as part of a unity, even if only the unity of a legal order? At issue is a group that demands exclusion from a polity rather than demanding its recognition and inclusion as a minority entitled to be treated as equal to, even if different from, the majority. I suggest that, in the end, Van der Walt justification of the majority/minority principle espouses an agonistic defence of political and legal unity.