Forst’s right to justification is a powerhouse of inclusion and openness. It demands that the doors of power be opened to all affected on equal and reciprocal terms. No person is to be denied a voice on matters that bear on them. And yet much of the power exercised in contemporary liberal democracies is closed to direct popular control (e.g., constitutional conventions, courts, executive committees, commissions, legislative bodies, juries, etc.). Can such exclusions be justified using the Forstian framework? If they cannot, should we conclude that they are illegitimate or that the Forstian framework needs reform? The argument proceeds via a contrast between the right to justification and Pettit’s account of non-domination and focuses on Forst’s spectacular recent book, The Noumenal Republic.

In this article I press four different objections on Forst’s theory of the ‘Right to Justification’. These are (i) that the principle of justification is not well-formulated; (ii) that ‘reasonableness and reciprocity’, as these notions are used by Rawls, are not apt to support a Kantian conception of morality; (iii) that the principle of justification, as Forst understands it, gives an inadequate account of what makes actions wrong; and (iv) that, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, Forst’s account veers towards a version of moral realism that is prima facie incompatible with Kantian constructivism. I then evaluate Forst’s theory in the light of a distinction made by Sharon Street between restricted and unrestricted constructivism. I show that Forst has reason to deny that it is either the one or the other, but he is not able to show that it is both or neither. I conclude that the arguments Forst advances in support of his constructivist theory of the right to justification entail that it is a metaphysical and comprehensive conception in the relevant, Rawlsian sense. Forst’s theory of the right to justification therefore fails to fulfil one of the main stated aims.