Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Majoritarian Democracy and Minoritarian Constitutionalism
- 3 From Majoritarian to Deliberative Theories of Constitutional Democracy
- 4 Deliberative Democracy and Substantive Constitutionalism
- 5 Disagreement and the Constitution of Democracy
- 6 The Seducements of Juristic Discourse as Democratic Deliberation
- 7 Constitutionalism as the Procedural Structuring of Deliberative Democracy
- 8 The Institutions of Constitutional Review I: Design Problems and Judicial Review
- 9 The Institutions of Constitutional Review II: Horizontal Dispersal and Vertical Empowerment
- Bibliography
- Index
- Table of Cases
5 - Disagreement and the Constitution of Democracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Majoritarian Democracy and Minoritarian Constitutionalism
- 3 From Majoritarian to Deliberative Theories of Constitutional Democracy
- 4 Deliberative Democracy and Substantive Constitutionalism
- 5 Disagreement and the Constitution of Democracy
- 6 The Seducements of Juristic Discourse as Democratic Deliberation
- 7 Constitutionalism as the Procedural Structuring of Deliberative Democracy
- 8 The Institutions of Constitutional Review I: Design Problems and Judicial Review
- 9 The Institutions of Constitutional Review II: Horizontal Dispersal and Vertical Empowerment
- Bibliography
- Index
- Table of Cases
Summary
Perhaps we should change our focus from constitutionalized practices of democracy to democratized practices of constitutionalism. Dworkin and Perry both seek to respond to democratic objections to judicial review by relying on a theory of the legitimacy constraints of democracy. According to this view, on some matters, legitimate democracy requires getting the right moral answers. Thus, democratic processes must be constitutionalized to ensure such right outcomes on fundamental moral matters. To the extent that judges are better positioned to engage in principled moral reasoning, the arguments continue, we ought to entrust them with ensuring the constitutionalized legitimacy conditions of democracy. I argued that this latter institutional move, however, threatened to simply revive the paternalist worries forcefully articulated by Learned Hand. Waldron's rights-based objection to rights-based judicial review, although not dispositive, provided further warning of the moral costs of treating fellow citizens as incapable of reasoning together about the content and proper scope of the legal rights required for democracy.
An alternative strategy for justifying judicial review that this chapter investigates is to understand a constitution itself as a product of true democracy, of real popular sovereignty. It is then up to the people, exercising their constituent power at the level of a constitutional assembly, to decide what particular institutional arrangements will best carry forward their collective ideals and decisions.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Deliberative Democracy and the Institutions of Judicial Review , pp. 130 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007