The Law of Democracy

The Law of Democracy PDF

Author: Samuel Issacharoff

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 1286

ISBN-13:

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The Law of Democracy offers a systematic exploration of the legal construction of American democracy. The book brings together a cluster of issues in law regulating the design of democratic institutions, and the book employs a variety of methods - historical, comparative, theoretical, doctrinal - to explore foundational questions in the theory and practice of democracy. Covered issues include the historical development of the individual right to vote; current struggles over racial gerrymandering; the relationship of the state to political parties; the constitutional and policy issues surrounding campaign-finance reform; and the tension between majority rule and fair representation of minorities in democratic bodies.

The Law of Democracy

The Law of Democracy PDF

Author: Samuel Issacharoff

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 1294

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Law of Democracy offers a systematic exploration of the legal construction of American democracy. The book brings together a cluster of issues in law regulating the design of democratic institutions, and the book employs a variety of methods - historical, comparative, theoretical, doctrinal - to explore foundational questions in the theory and practice of democracy. Covered issues include the historical development of the individual right to vote; current struggles over racial gerrymandering; the relationship of the state to political parties; the constitutional and policy issues surrounding campaign-finance reform; and the tension between majority rule and fair representation of minorities in democratic bodies.

The Law of Deliberative Democracy

The Law of Deliberative Democracy PDF

Author: Ron Levy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-03

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1134502060

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Laws have colonised most of the corners of political practice, and now substantially determine the process and even the product of democracy. Yet analysis of these laws of politics has been hobbled by a limited set of theories about politics. Largely absent is the perspective of deliberative democracy – a rising theme in political studies that seeks a more rational, cooperative, informed, and truly democratic politics. Legal and political scholarship often view each other in reductive terms. This book breaks through such caricatures to provide the first full-length examination of whether and how the law of politics can match deliberative democratic ideals. Essential reading for those interested in either law or politics, the book presents a challenging critique of laws governing electoral politics in the English-speaking world. Judges often act as spoilers, vetoing or naively reshaping schemes meant to enhance deliberation. This pattern testifies to deliberation’s weak penetration into legal consciousness. It is also a fault of deliberative democracy scholarship itself, which says little about how deliberation connects with the actual practice of law. Superficially, the law of politics and deliberative democracy appear starkly incompatible. Yet, after laying out this critique, The Law of Deliberative Democracy considers prospects for reform. The book contends that the conflict between law and public deliberation is not inevitable: it results from judicial and legislative choices. An extended, original analysis demonstrates how lawyers and deliberativists can engage with each other to bridge their two solitudes.

Democracy and the Rule of Law

Democracy and the Rule of Law PDF

Author: Adam Przeworski

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-07-21

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780521532662

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This book addresses the question of why governments sometimes follow the law and other times choose to evade the law. The traditional answer of jurists has been that laws have an autonomous causal efficacy: law rules when actions follow anterior norms; the relation between laws and actions is one of obedience, obligation, or compliance. Contrary to this conception, the authors defend a positive interpretation where the rule of law results from the strategic choices of relevant actors. Rule of law is just one possible outcome in which political actors process their conflicts using whatever resources they can muster: only when these actors seek to resolve their conflicts by recourse to la, does law rule. What distinguishes 'rule-of-law' as an institutional equilibrium from 'rule-by-law' is the distribution of power. The former emerges when no one group is strong enough to dominate the others and when the many use institutions to promote their interest.

Law and Democracy

Law and Democracy PDF

Author: Glenn Patmore

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2014-12-24

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1925022064

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Law and Democracy: Contemporary Questions provides a fresh understanding of law’s regulation of Australian democracy. The book enriches public law scholarship, deepening and challenging the current conceptions of law’s regulation of popular participation and legal representation. The book raises and addresses a number of contemporary questions about legal institutions, principles and practices: How should the meaning of ‘the people’ in the Australian Constitution be defined by the High Court of Australia?How do developing judicial conceptions of democracy define citizenship?What is the legal right to participate in the political community?Should political advisors to Ministers be subject to legal accountability mechanisms?What challenges do applied law schemes pose to notions of responsible government and how can they be best addressed?How can the study of the ritual of electoral politics in Australia and other common law countries supplement the standard account of democracy?How might the ritual of the pledge of Australian citizenship limit or enhance democratic participation?What is the conflict between legal restrictions of freedom of expression and democracy, and the role of social media? Examining the regulation of democracy, this book scrutinises the assumptions and scope of constitutional democracy and enhances our understanding of the frontiers of accountability and responsible government. In addition, key issues of law, culture and democracy are revealed in their socio-legal context. The book brings together emerging and established scholars and practitioners with expertise in public law. It will be of interest to those studying law, politics, cultural studies and contemporary history.

Democratic Law

Democratic Law PDF

Author: Seana Valentine Shiffrin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-09-17

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0190084502

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In this book, based on her 2017 Berkeley Tanner Lectures, Seana Valentine Shiffrin offers an original, deontological account of democracy, law, and their interrelation. Her central thesis is that democracy and democratic law have intrinsically valuable, interconnected communicative functions. Democracy and democratic law together allow us to fulfill our fundamental duties to convey to each another messages of equal respect by fashioning the sorts of public joint commitments to act that a sincere message of equal respect requires. Law and democracy are essential to each other: the aspirations of democracy cannot be realized except through a legal system, and, conversely, law can fulfill its primary function only in a democratic context. After defending these theses, Shiffrin explores two doctrinal examples to illustrate how a communicative conception of democratic law would yield concrete implications. First, articulating the special democratic character of judicially articulated common law, she resists instrumental, outcome-oriented conceptions of law and defends the essential importance of the common law duty of good faith in contracts. Second, appealing to the need for law to articulate a coherent set of moral commitments, she criticizes the U.S. Supreme Court's approach to constitutional balancing. In a set of commentaries, Niko Kolodny, Richard Brooks, and Anna Stilz offer illuminating and sometimes provocative discussion of both the philosophical and the legal aspects of Shiffrin's discussion. Shiffrin's responses expand upon themes concerning legal compliance, commitments, communication, dissent, political participation, and the permissible range of state interests.

Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy

Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy PDF

Author: Richard A. Posner

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9780674042292

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A liberal state is a representative democracy constrained by the rule of law. Richard Posner argues for a conception of the liberal state based on pragmatic theories of government. He views the actions of elected officials as guided by interests rather than by reason and the decisions of judges by discretion rather than by rules. He emphasizes the institutional and material, rather than moral and deliberative, factors in democratic decision making. Posner argues that democracy is best viewed as a competition for power by means of regular elections. Citizens should not be expected to play a significant role in making complex public policy regarding, say, taxes or missile defense. The great advantage of democracy is not that it is the rule of the wise or the good but that it enables stability and orderly succession in government and limits the tendency of rulers to enrich or empower themselves to the disadvantage of the public. Posner’s theory steers between political theorists’ concept of deliberative democracy on the left and economists’ public-choice theory on the right. It makes a significant contribution to the theory of democracy—and to the theory of law as well, by showing that the principles that inform Schumpeterian democratic theory also inform the theory and practice of adjudication. The book argues for law and democracy as twin halves of a pragmatic theory of American government.

No Rule of Law, No Democracy

No Rule of Law, No Democracy PDF

Author: Cristina Nicolescu-Waggonner

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1438462638

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Argues that new democracies face consolidation challenges due to campaign finance corruption and the unwillingness of politicians to reform rule of law enforcement. Mainstream theories assert that democracy cures corruption. In market economies, however, elections are expensive and parties, with ever-thinning memberships, cannot legally acquire the necessary campaign funds. In order to secure electoral funds, a large number of politicians misappropriate public funds. Due to the illicit character of these transactions, high officials with conflicts of interest prefer to leave anticorruption enforcement mechanisms unreformed and reserve the right to intervene in the judicial process, with dire consequences for the rule of law. In No Rule of Law, No Democracy, Cristina Nicolescu-Waggonner demonstrates that when corrupt politicians are in power—true of nearly all new democracies—they will protect their office and fail to implement rule of law reforms. Consequently, these polities never reach a point where democracy could and would cure corruption. This dysfunction is tested in one hundred cases over sixteen years with significant results. In the case of the Czech Republic, for example, which is regarded as a consolidated democracy, there is systematic corruption, misappropriation of state funds, an unreformed judiciary, and arbitrary application of law. The only solution is a powerful, independent, well-funded anticorruption agency. Romania, one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, established, at the European Union’s request, powerful anticorruption bodies and punished corrupt leaders, which created the predictability of enforcement. It is the certainty of punishment that curtails corruption and establishes true rule of law.

Constitutional Law

Constitutional Law PDF

Author: Geoffrey R. Stone

Publisher: Aspen Publishing

Published: 2017-12-20

Total Pages: 2238

ISBN-13: 1454896523

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Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on CasebookConnect, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities; practice questions from your favorite study aids; an outline tool and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes. Learn more about Connected eBooks Adhering to the multi-disciplinary and scholarly approach of its predecessors, the eighth edition of Constitutional Law guides students through all facets of constitutional law. Constitutional Law explores traditional constitutional doctrine through the lens of varying critical and social perspectives informed by political theory, philosophy, sociology, ethics, history, and economics. This comprehensive approach paired with carefully edited cases provides instructors with rich material for classroom discussion. Logically organized for a two-semester course, the first part of Constitutional Law tackles issues concerning separation of powers and federalism while the second part addresses all facets of individual rights and liberties. Constitutional Law also provides thoughtfully selected content on the First Amendment to give students a well-rounded understanding of religion and free speech issues. Key Features: The text’s attention to policy, including discussion of competing critical and social perspectives. A multi-disciplinary approach that draws on political theory, philosophy, sociology, ethics, history, and economics. Thoughtful editing, including both lightly and more tightly-edited cases that balances close textual analysis with comprehensive converge of important opinions and pivotal cases. Streamlined treatment of First Amendment law, so that it efficiently provides the necessary fundamentals in free speech and religious liberties jurisprudence.