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Full-Text Articles in Law
Deliberation Or Tabulation? The Self-Undermining Constitutional Architecture Of Election Campaigns, James A. Gardner
Deliberation Or Tabulation? The Self-Undermining Constitutional Architecture Of Election Campaigns, James A. Gardner
Buffalo Law Review
Perhaps the one completely uncontested truth in the shared public ideology of American politics is that an election campaign ought to be a serious occasion in the life of a democratic polity, a time when citizens reflect maturely on the great public issues of the day. On this view, the ultimate purpose of election campaigns is to offer voters and candidates a meaningful opportunity for deliberation and persuasion. Of course, the typical modern American election campaign does not seem seriously reflective and deliberative so much as shallow and unengaging. Reasoned persuasion seems to play a minor role, if that. The …
Deliberative Dilemmas: A Critique Of Deliberation Day From The Perspective Of Election Law, Chad Flanders
Deliberative Dilemmas: A Critique Of Deliberation Day From The Perspective Of Election Law, Chad Flanders
All Faculty Scholarship
My paper deals with two subject areas - deliberative democracy theory and election law - that have had surprisingly little contact with another. My paper tries to remedy this lacuna by looking at how the two fields intersect and can contribute to the understanding of one another. In particular, I look in detail at a particularly prominent proposal by two political theorists, Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin's Deliberation Day, and how the aims of that proposal might be frustrated by the present structure of American election law. I argue that because they fail to take into account certain structural features …