The Pragmatic Case for Legal Tolerance

Abstract

Tolerance has been studied and critiqued extensively in moral and political philosophy. By contrast, we know relatively little about the salience of tolerance to law. In this article, I aim to fill that gap in our knowledge by laying the conceptual groundwork for a pragmatic case for legal tolerance. The article’s core arguments are that (i) lawmakers often engage in legal tolerance of contested beliefs, opinions and practices, and (ii) they tend to do so for pragmatic reasons. In building the pragmatic case for legal tolerance, I discuss legal responses in a wide array of jurisdictions and to a broad range of contested moral issues. I also unpack the implications of legal tolerance by analysing its (in)stability and its relationship to state communicative power. I conclude the article by indicating some potential limits of pragmatic legal tolerance.