Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

This paper examines the view that ‘nations’ are natural entities, composed of homogeneous linguistic and cultural groups, and argues that this theory fails to take account of our multiple and overlapping identities.

To argue that constitutional adjudication is political does not carry us very far unless we go on to specify what the pursuit of politics entails, the goals it seeks to attain, and the basic principles informing its practice. The word political has no clearly defined meaning in modern usage. Rather, it has the chameleon-like capacity to change colours so as to blend with a variety of different conceptual backgrounds. Of course, if we adopt an Aristotelian notion of politics as the pursuit of the common good of a community and the individual goods of its members, we can agree that …