Digital Commons Network^™

The Seeds Of Change: Popular Protests As Constitutional Moments, Juliano Zaiden Benvindo

Marquette Law Review

Bruce Ackerman’s influential theory of “dualist democracy” posits that in American history some extraordinary moments of constitution- making are “constitutional moments,” distinguishable from other periods of ordinary lawmaking. What is missing from the Ackermanian account of constitutional moments, however, is a deeper appreciation of the nature of popular protests, specifically that they may sometimes constitute the core of a constitutional moment, but on other occasions, they may serve as a very different inflection point in the evolution of a constitutional democracy. Up until now, the legal literature has not devoted much attention to such application of Ackerman’s theory. In this …