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Semiotic Disobedience, Sonia K. Katyal

Sonia Katyal

Nearly twenty years ago, a prominent media studies professor, John Fiske, coined the term “semiotic democracy” to describe a world where audiences freely and widely engage in the use of cultural symbols in response to the forces of media. A semiotic democracy enables the audience, to a varying degree, to “resist,” “subvert,” and “recode” certain cultural symbols to express meanings that are different from the ones intended by their creators, thereby empowering consumers, rather than producers. In this Article, I seek to introduce another framework to supplement Fiske’s important metaphor: the phenomenon of “semiotic disobedience.” Three contemporary cultural moments in …

A Quantum Congress, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

Does Political Islam Conflict With Secular Democracy? Philosophical Reflections On Religion And Politics, David Ingram

David Ingram

Abstract: This paper rebuts the thesis that political Islam conflicts with secular democracy. More precisely, it examines three sorts of claims that ostensibly support this thesis: (a) The Muslim religion is incompatible with secular democracy; (b) No Muslim country has instituted secular democracy; and (c) No movement seeking to advance its agenda as aggressively as political Islam does can do so with the degree of moderation required of a political party that is committed to secular democracy. Theologians, philosophers, and political scientists have debated (a) through (c) within the jurisdiction of their respective fields. I propose to combine these debates …

The Structural Constitutional Principle Of Republican Legitimacy, Mark D. Rosen

Mark D. Rosen

Democracy does not spontaneously occur by citizens gathering to choose laws. Instead, representative democracy takes place within an extensive legal framework that determines such matters as who gets to vote, how campaigns are conducted, and what conditions must be met for representatives to make valid law. Many of the “rules of the road” that operationalize republicanism have been subject to constitutional challenges in recent decades. For example, lawsuits have been brought against partisan gerrymandering—which is partly responsible for the fact that most congressional districts are no longer party competitive, but instead are either safely Republican or safely Democratic—and against onerous …