"contested concept" is a perfectly correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it when referring to an argument or idea that is still open to debate. For example, "The idea of global warming as a man-made phenomenon is a contested concept."
And yet extinction has been a much contested concept.
As such a project, philosophical anthropology now has the status of what, in another context, the English political theorist W.B. Gallie called an "essentially contested concept".
Human nature is a highly contested concept, but whatever it may amount to, it doesn't seem to involve a thirst for good news.
Constitutionally speaking, a government official who sets out to determine what a contested concept within Islam means, or which imams have the right to speak for a particular community, would be in danger of transgressing one of the cardinal tenets of the Establishment Clause: the secular state shall not become an arbiter of religious content.
And it still is a highly contested concept.
Doing research on an 'essentially contested concept' such as social entrepreneurship is not straightforward.
Virtual Field Guides (VFG), Virtual Field Trips or Virtual Fieldwork are terms used interchangeably throughout literature yet they are contested concepts with varying definitions (Litherland & Stott, 2012).
Some philosophers have suggested that certain concepts should be regarded as 'essentially contested concepts' (see Gallie 1956); if there is anything to this suggestion, private property might be one of them (see Waldron 1988, pp. 51 2).
In a heavily mediated environment, what is private, what is public, and what is publicly permissible (on the basis of consent) are elusive and contested concepts.
Participants in the case, likely to be a drawn-out one, will wrestle with some of the most contested concepts in American law — sanity, an impartial jury and the political pressures for punishment in a deeply wounded community.
Beyond playing the role of theologian through official pronouncements on contested concepts like jihad, the government inappropriately serves as a missionary when it looks to convert would-be radicals and backs up its efforts with taxpayer-financed outreach.
