Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Economic Individualism And Preference Formation, Andrzej Rapaczynski
Economic Individualism And Preference Formation, Andrzej Rapaczynski
Faculty Scholarship
This note examines some issues involved in an attempt to go beyond the assumption, long-made by most economists, that people’s preferences are simply to be treated as “given” and that the principle of consumer sovereignty entails a refusal to consider some (or some people’s) revealed preferences as more authoritative than others. The most important break with that assumption has been the development of behavioral economics, which shows that people may not always know what they really want, and that economists have to develop a more critical approach, distinguishing people’s true preferences from those that are merely apparent. While this approach, …
The Original Theory Of Constitutionalism, David Singh Grewal, Jedediah Purdy
The Original Theory Of Constitutionalism, David Singh Grewal, Jedediah Purdy
Faculty Scholarship
The U.S. Constitution embodies a conception of democratic sovereignty that has been substantially forgotten and obscured in today’s commentary. Recovering this original idea of constitution-making shows that today’s originalism is, ironically, unfaithful to its origins in an idea of self-rule that prized both the initial ratification of fundamental law and the political community’s ongoing power to reaffirm or change it. This does not mean, however, that living constitutionalism better fits the original conception of democratic self-rule. Rather, because the Constitution itself makes amendment practically impossible, it all but shuts down the very form of democratic sovereignty that authorizes it. No …