Dissensus

Now it is apparent that neither the consensus of Christianity with other religions, nor its dissensus from them, nor the absolute or relative superiority which we claim for it, can be made evident without a thorough and methodical comparison of all religions.

Underlying a real and culturally meaningful general consensus about the wrongness of rape, there can indeed be many contextual dissensuses about rape being okay. Only when we allow a reified conception of consensus to drive out the nuanced understanding in the ethnographic literature of the way people talk when they accuse and excuse crime do we see consensus-dissensus as being an "insoluble inconsistency" ([Christopher] Uggen at 496) at the foundation of the theory.

In this chapter, we explore two forms of dissensus. The first is horizontal dissensus, or that which occurs within a three-judge panel on the courts of appeals. Judges signal this form of dissensus by writing separate opinions that take the form of a dissent or concurrence. The second is vertical dissensus, which occurs when a court of appeals panel disagrees with the lower court over the proper resolution of the case. This form of dissensus is observed when the court of appeals reverses the lower court's decision, either in whole or in part.

Certainly parliamentary politics is indebted to the rhetorical culture of addressing issues from opposite views and debating the alternatives pro et contra. In parliamentary procedure dissensus and debate are institutionalised: no motion is approved without a thorough examination of and confrontation among imaginable alternatives.