The hidden political — Meritocratic justification and its role in lawmaking

Abstract

The article aims at analyzing meritocratic justification in lawmaking against the political un-derstood in Chantal Mouffe’s terms as a certain indelible antagonism underlying the functioning of every society. When referred to lawmaking, meritocracy is based on the assumption that it is possible to eliminate the political from the lawmaking process by replacing it with the expert factor. Based on the example of judicial lawmaking and the lawmaking of independent regulatory agencies in the USA, the author points out that the meritocratic justification: 1) serves to legitimize adopted legal solutions, 2) does not eliminate the political but only masks it by referring to the criteria of objectivity and expertise.