Introduction

In his invitation to the symposium (the proceedings of which are published in this volume) Civility, Legality, and Justice in America, Austin Sarat asked, “Is civility a political virtue in and of itself? Or is it, as Michael Sandel observed, ‘an overrated virtue’?” The answer to both questions appears to be “maybe.”

As we discuss in the following, despite the symposium’s title, none of the speakers considers the oft-lamented lack of civility within the legal profession; instead, the focus is on the broader political world. There is general agreement that if civility is a virtue, it is not the highest virtue. And our speakers tend to agree that civility’s chilling distance is not a virtue within intimate relationships. Profound disagreement exists, however, over civility’s effect on political discourse. Jeremy Waldron, Teresa Bejan, and Bryan Garsten argue that civility enables beneficial discussions of contentious issues; Linda Zerilli and Leti Volpp contend that civility forbids crucial discussions and unjustly excludes certain minority viewpoints from civilized discourse. Thus the dual nature of civility: it can both permit and prohibit communication on our most divisive issues.