Civil Society and Multiple Repositories of Power

Securing plural mechanisms for human flourishing is at the core of the civil society project. Greene advances this claim first by arguing that it is impossible to disentangle the public from the private in our everyday lives, and thus it is no slight on the civil society project that private, civil society institutions are not exogenous from the public institutions with which they interact. Second, Greene defends the traditional public/private line at least insofar as it reflects plural modes of achieving legal and social change. Third, the Article buttresses the case for civil society even if such institutions foster non-democratic, anti-assimilationist norms.

Finally, the Article con- tends that educating children raises a different and complex set of issues, best resolved by ensuring that no person or persons have monopoly power over such education.