Republican Liberty and Constitutional Constraints

One of the interesting issues raised by Philip Pettit's paper and book is the significance of his distinction between liberal and republican liberty. To articulate a few of the many ways in which this issue could be considered, one could, adopting a historical approach, compare the republican and liberal traditions in order to test Pettit's account of the two conceptions of liberty' and the shift from republican to liberal liberty. The usefulness of the two conceptions in capturing imponant aspects of the traditions could also be examined. Alternatively, adopting an analytical approach, we could accept Pettit's interpretation of republican and liberal liberty and the role of these values within the normative frameworks of republicanism and liberalism, and then question whether republicanism is superior. Pettit argues that liberal liberty is, in one imponant respect, narrower than republican liberty. While he recognises that left-of-centre liberals can overcome this narrowness by consulting a range of values, he claims that republicanism has the advantage of simplicity: in deciding issues, it is sufficient to consult the single value of republican liberty. However, it can be argued that the complexity of the 1ibera1 approach is not problematic if consulting republican liberty alone leads us to ignore imponant values or if it leads to a similar level of complexity, in terms of assessing and weighing many different considerations. Both difficulties appear in Pettit's application of republican liberty to the criminal justice system, and one could question whether they also affect Pettit's treatment of constitutional matters.