Book Review: Dress, Law and Naked Truth – A Cultural Study of Fashion and Form
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663914560970a |
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| Author | Jenny Scott |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Social & Legal Studies 24(1)
Habermas’s proceduralism, which falls under the label of constitutional contractarianism
only in part, is safe from such criticism. This is because Habermas grants that, although
the normative credibility of a background consensus over moral principles might indeed
be limited, this is nothing to lament, given that once we subscribe to communicatively
reasonable pluralism, we do not anymore conceive constitutionalism as ‘bound to exo-
genously determined moral norms’ (p. 183).
The conclusory chapter (Chapter 9), without underplaying the divergence between
Rawls’s and Habermas’s philosophical projects, sheds light on some of their common
aspects (notably, on their attraction to theoretical representations not of political reality
but of political ideals). In effect, the book’s final pages echo Habermas’s characteriza-
tion of his disagreement with Rawls as a family quarrel. This evidences that Hedrick’s
siding with Habermas is not driven by a polemical attitude against the Rawlsian theory
but by his belief that Rawls’s aims might be better served through a Habermasian per-
spective. In that respect, Hedrick’s monograph is neither just a reassuring read for the
followers of Habermas nor just an invitation to supporters of Rawls for a response but
also – and primarily so – a contribution to our understanding of the two philosophers’
shared aspiration to critically reinvigorate, in the late 20th century, the trust of political
philosophy in universal reason.
HARIS PSARRAS
University of Edinburgh, UK
GARY WATT, Dress, Law and Naked Truth – A Cultural Study of Fashion and Form. London:
Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. xi–166, ISBN 9781472500427, £50 (hbk).
Dress, Law and Naked Truth – A Cultural Study of Fashion and Form is an examination
of dress in the legal landscape. Arguing that the law is ‘an artificial human construction’
(p. xvi), Gary Watt’s central thesis is that ‘dress is law and law is dress’ (p. 13) thereby
suggesting that we should look more closely at the materiality of the law as a way to bet-
ter understand its functions. Indeed he proposes that, like its architecture and its speech,
law’s forms of dress ‘are not mere metaphors for the power and authority of the State;
they instantiate the power and authority of the political State’ (p. xv). Thus, he explores
the face of the law through its dress, and he maintains that it is not until we strip away
these fabricated layers that we will begin to see the truth. The book has six chapters, each
one focused on a different aspect of how dress and fashion...
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