Intentions, Procedures, and Social Rules

Abstract

Abstract Brian Flanagan asks in Chapter 27: What explains why certain texts are legal statutes? His answer highlights majority-preferred legislative procedures: certain outputs of such procedures are intentions of the legislature that certain texts be statutes––though intentions that need not conform to a List-Pettit model of group intentions as involving dense structures of a group mind. This chapter is in agreement with Flanagan’s focus on legislative procedures and with the idea that the outcomes of such procedures can be institutional intentions of the legislature. But an alternative model of such procedures, one that sees them as a kind of social rule that need not satisfy a strong majoritarian constraint is argued for. This proposal highlights, but qualifies, the role of shared policies in relevant social rules; and it supports the idea that certain procedural outputs are intentions of the legislature, functionally speaking. This highlights the core role of planning agency in our institutional lives.