Deliberation, Dismissal, and Democracy

In civil litigation, dismissal offers the opportunity, early in a controversy, to preemptively dispose of a claim that does not present a legally judiciable case. Everyday talk, of course, is not bound by such procedural rules. Yet in conversation we often engage in a form of discursive dismissal: when faced with discomforting claims, our frequent instinct is not to engage in reasoned deliberation over them, but to brush them aside without considering their merits. How does dismissal fit within a broader ecosystem of deliberation? What is deliberative dismissal? When (if ever) is it justified?

In Deliberation, Dismissal, and Democracy, David Schraub analyzes our tendency toward dismissal and the problems that flow from it. Schraub focuses on dismissal as a social, rather than legal, phenomenon. Drawing on academic work both historical and contemporary, as well as examples drawn from everyday discourse and controversy, he creates a framework explicating why dismissal is a significant problem that defies easy resolution. While a state can be held to an anti-censorship commitment, private actors cannot and should not avoid "discriminating" on basis of viewpoint. What they can do, however, is cultivate certain deliberative virtues--dispositions towards consideration and open-mindedness--that orient them towards deliberating, rather than dismissing, the hard thoughts that any healthy democracy must be willing to tackle.