In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), John Locke defines the “law of opinion” as “approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which, by a secret and tacit consent, establishes itself in the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men in the world.” In his 1962 study Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, Habermas specifically excludes the “law of opinion” from the public sphere, relegating it to the “prehistory” of public opinion as such. This essay will first attempt to clarify the characteristics and sources of Lockean opinion, and to understand the reasons for Habermas’s rejection of it. Second, in the light of this excluded notion of public opinion, we will present a tentative analysis of certain aspects of the historiographical reception of the Habermasian paradigm, identifying its impasse, the criticisms made of it, and possible alternatives to it. By examining the reasons for this impasse, we will address the current question of whether the Habermasian model has been surpassed.