I have finally gotten a sense of where I'm going with my Jurisprudence essay and what the argument is. I note with interest that both 8,000 words are essentially about freedom: one is about liberty in general, and this one is about the freedom of speech and expression which, obviously, I will defend to the death against ridiculous religious zealotry.
Also, Habermas' conception of the public sphere is extremely elitist - which explains why I will be defending it in my essay. It makes perfect sense to me: how can a person engage in rational-critical discourse if that person isn't clever? Right? Right?!