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Democracy

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Articles 181 - 210 of 437

Full-Text Articles in Constitutional Law

Campaign Finance And Political Gerrymandering Decisions In The October 2005 Term, Burt Neuborne Jun 2014

Campaign Finance And Political Gerrymandering Decisions In The October 2005 Term, Burt Neuborne

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.


Second-Order Diversity Revisited, Jeffrey Abramson Mar 2014

Second-Order Diversity Revisited, Jeffrey Abramson

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.


Pa. Gay Marriage With An Exemption, Bruce Ledewitz Mar 2014

Pa. Gay Marriage With An Exemption, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals


Experimenting With Religious Liberty: The Quasi-Constitutional Status Of Religious Exemptions, Bruce Ledewitz Jan 2014

Experimenting With Religious Liberty: The Quasi-Constitutional Status Of Religious Exemptions, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.


The Vietnam Draft Cases And The Pro-Religion Equality Project, Bruce Ledewitz Jan 2014

The Vietnam Draft Cases And The Pro-Religion Equality Project, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.


Education Rights And The New Due Process, Areto A. Imoukhuede Jan 2014

Education Rights And The New Due Process, Areto A. Imoukhuede

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues for a human dignity-based, due process clause analysis to recognize the fundamental duty of government to provide high quality, public education. Access to public education is a fundamental duty, or positive fundamental right because education is a basic human need and a constituent part of all democratic rights.


An Opinion For The Ages, Bruce Ledewitz Dec 2013

An Opinion For The Ages, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals


The Incompatible Treatment Of Majorities In Election Law And Deliberative Democracy, James A. Gardner Dec 2013

The Incompatible Treatment Of Majorities In Election Law And Deliberative Democracy, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Deliberative democracy offers a distinctive and appealing conception of political life, but is it one that might be called into service to guide actual reform of existing election law? This possibility seems remote because election law and deliberative democracy are built around different priorities and theoretical premises. A foundational area of disagreement lies in the treatment of majorities. Election law is structured, at both the legislative and constitutional levels, so as to privilege majorities and systematically to magnify their power, whereas deliberative democracy aims at privileging minorities (or at least de-privileging majorities). The main purpose of the election law now …


Stretching Religious Liberty, Bruce Ledewitz Nov 2013

Stretching Religious Liberty, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals


Statutory Interpretation As Constestatory Democracy, Glen Staszewski Oct 2013

Statutory Interpretation As Constestatory Democracy, Glen Staszewski

William & Mary Law Review

This Article provides a novel solution to the countermajoritarian difficulty in statutory interpretation by applying recent insights from civic republican theory to the adjudication of statutory disputes in the modern regulatory state. From a republican perspective, freedom consists of the absence of the potential for arbitrary domination, and democracy should therefore include both electoral and contestatory dimensions. The Article argues that statutory interpretation in the modern regulatory state is best understood as a mechanism of contestatory democracy. It develops this conception of statutory interpretation by considering the distinct roles of legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts in making and implementing the …


Democracy And The Right To Vote: Rethinking Democratic Rights Under The Charter, Yasmin Dawood Oct 2013

Democracy And The Right To Vote: Rethinking Democratic Rights Under The Charter, Yasmin Dawood

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article addresses the Supreme Court of Canada’s theory of democracy and the right to vote. After setting forth the Court’s general approach to democracy, I develop a new conceptual framework for the Court’s approach to democratic rights. First, I argue that the Court has adopted a “bundle of democratic rights” approach to the right to vote. By this I mean that the Court has interpreted the right to vote as consisting of multiple democratic rights, each of which is concerned with a particular facet of democratic governance. Second, I claim that the democratic rights recognized by the Court are …


The Cosmopolitan Turn In Constitutionalism: An Integrated Conception Of Public Law, Mattias Kumm Jul 2013

The Cosmopolitan Turn In Constitutionalism: An Integrated Conception Of Public Law, Mattias Kumm

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

If the point of constitutionalism is to define the legal framework within which collective self-government can legitimately take place, constitutionalism has to take a cosmopolitan turn: it has to occupy itself with the global legitimacy conditions for the exercise of state sovereignty. Contrary to widely made implicit assumptions in constitutional theory and practice, constitutional legitimacy is not self-standing. Whether a national constitution and the political practices authorized by it are legitimate does not depend only on the appropriate democratic quality and rights-respecting nature of domestic legal practices. Instead, national constitutional legitimacy depends, in part, on how the national constitution is …


Criminal Justice, Local Democracy, And Constitutional Rights, Stephen J. Schulhofer Apr 2013

Criminal Justice, Local Democracy, And Constitutional Rights, Stephen J. Schulhofer

Michigan Law Review

Universally admired, and viewed with great affection, even love, by all who knew him, Harvard law professor Bill Stuntz died in March 2011 at the age of fifty-two, after a long, courageous battle with debilitating back pain and then insurmountable cancer. In a career that deserved to be much longer, Stuntz produced dozens of major articles on criminal law and procedure. He was a leader in carrying forward the work of scholars who had analyzed criminal justice through the lens of economic analysis, and he added his own distinctive dimension by insisting on the importance of political incentives, with their …


Pennsylvania’S Supreme Court, Still Broken, Bruce Ledewitz Mar 2013

Pennsylvania’S Supreme Court, Still Broken, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals


The Problem Of Democracy In Contexts Of Polarization, Imer Flores Jan 2013

The Problem Of Democracy In Contexts Of Polarization, Imer Flores

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this paper I argue that contemporary democracies all over the world are more polarized than ever and intend to analyze not only the conditions of possibility of a democracy, in general, and in contexts of polarization, in particular, but also the relationship between democracy and polarization. My claim is that polarization, if certain conditions are met, more than a problem it is a great opportunity to democracy and a greater democratization. Hence, I bring to mind that it was Ronald Dworkin, who recently asked about the conditions of possibility of a democracy and its relationship with polarization by developing …


Congress Underestimated: The Case Of The World Bank, Kristina Daugirdas Jan 2013

Congress Underestimated: The Case Of The World Bank, Kristina Daugirdas

Articles

This article challenges the oft-repeated claim that international organizations undermine democracy by marginalizing national legislatures. Over the past forty years, Congress has established itself as a key player in setting U.S. policy toward the World Bank. Congress has done far more than restrain executive branch action with which it disagrees; it has affirmatively shaped the United States’ day-to-day participation in this key international organization and successfully defended its constitutional authority to do so.


Neo-Democracy, National Security, And Liberty, David Cole Jan 2013

Neo-Democracy, National Security, And Liberty, David Cole

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In his new book, Liberty and Security, Conor Gearty, professor of law at the London School of Economics and one of the United Kingdom’s leading authorities on civil liberties and national security, argues that many Western nations are in effect “neo-democracies” that fail systematically to live up to the fundamental egalitarian premises of true democracy, and that this development is seen in particular in the context of counter-terrorism policy. This review assesses that claim, and maintains that while Gearty is correct that many counter-terrorism measures are predicated on double standards, that critique is insufficient to answer the many difficult questions …


Towards A New Democratic Africa: The African Charter On Democracy, Elections And Governance, Stacy-Ann Elvy Jan 2013

Towards A New Democratic Africa: The African Charter On Democracy, Elections And Governance, Stacy-Ann Elvy

Other Publications

The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (“ADC”) recently entered into force on February 15, 2012. The main goal of the ADC is the encouragement and promotion of democracy and human rights on the African continent. The ADC is the first binding regional instrument adopted by member states of the African Union (“AU”) that attempts to comprehensively address all of the elements necessary for the establishment of liberal democracies. The ADC also contains a number of expansive provisions regarding unconstitutional changes of government. For instance, the ADC is the first legal instrument adopted by member states of the AU …


Reconciling Positivism And Realism: Kelsen And Habermas On Democracy And Human Rights, David Ingram Jan 2013

Reconciling Positivism And Realism: Kelsen And Habermas On Democracy And Human Rights, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

It is well known that Hans Kelsen and Jürgen Habermas invoke realist arguments drawn from social science in defending an international, democratic human rights regime against Carl Schmitt’s attack on the rule of law. However, despite embracing the realist spirit of Kelsen’s legal positivism, Habermas criticizes Kelsen for neglecting to connect the rule of law with a concept of procedural justice (Part I). I argue, to the contrary (Part II), that Kelsen does connect these terms, albeit in a manner that may be best described as functional, rather than conceptual. Indeed, whereas Habermas tends to emphasize a conceptual connection between …


The Structural Constitutional Principle Of Republican Legitimacy, Mark D. Rosen Dec 2012

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

William & Mary Law Review

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 …


Land Use By, For, And Of The People: Problems With The Application Of Initiatives And Referenda To The Zoning Process, Nicolas M. Kublicki Nov 2012

Land Use By, For, And Of The People: Problems With The Application Of Initiatives And Referenda To The Zoning Process, Nicolas M. Kublicki

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


"A Land Of Strangers": Communitarianism And The Rejuvenation Of Intermediate Associations, Derek E. Brown Oct 2012

"A Land Of Strangers": Communitarianism And The Rejuvenation Of Intermediate Associations, Derek E. Brown

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.


A Bakerian Response To Weinstein's Free Speech Theory, Anne Marie Lofaso Sep 2012

A Bakerian Response To Weinstein's Free Speech Theory, Anne Marie Lofaso

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


"Worse Than The Disease": The Anti-Corruption Principle, Free Expression, And The Democratic Process, Martin H. Redish, Elana Nightingale Dawson May 2012

"Worse Than The Disease": The Anti-Corruption Principle, Free Expression, And The Democratic Process, Martin H. Redish, Elana Nightingale Dawson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.


Toward A Meaning-Full Establishment Clause Neutrality, Bruce Ledewitz Jan 2012

Toward A Meaning-Full Establishment Clause Neutrality, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.


Robert Taylor, An Appreciation, Bruce Ledewitz Jan 2012

Robert Taylor, An Appreciation, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals.


Changing Burma From Without: Political Activism Among The Burmese Diaspora, David C. Williams Jan 2012

Changing Burma From Without: Political Activism Among The Burmese Diaspora, David C. Williams

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This Article examines the role that the Burmese diaspora plays from afar in influencing reform inside the country. It offers a brief history of the crisis in Burma as background for identifying the various elements of the diaspora: those on the run from the military; those in camps for internally displaced persons and refugees; migrant workers; leaders of the democracy movement active on Burma's borders; asylees; and professional activists with influence on the international community. The different groups use the different strategies available to them. The leadership on the borders is helping to lead the democracy movement inside the country; …


Election Law As Applied Democratic Theory, James A. Gardner Jan 2012

Election Law As Applied Democratic Theory, James A. Gardner

Journal Articles

Democracy does not implement itself; a society’s commitment to govern itself democratically can be effectuated only through law. Yet as soon as law appears on the scene significant choices must be made concerning the legal structure of democratic institutions. The heart of the study of election law is thus the examination of the choices that our laws make in seeking to structure a workable system of democratic self-rule. In this essay, written for a symposium on Teaching Election Law, I describe how my Election Law course and materials focus on questions of choice in institutional design by emphasizing election law’s …


The Originalist Case Against Congressional Supermajority Voting Rules, Dan T. Coenen Jan 2012

The Originalist Case Against Congressional Supermajority Voting Rules, Dan T. Coenen

Scholarly Works

Controversy over the Senate’s filibuster practice dominates modern discussion of American legislative government. With increasing frequency, commentators have urged that the upper chamber’s requirement of sixty votes to close debate on pending matters violates a majority-rulebased norm of constitutional law. Proponents of this view, however, tend to gloss over a more basic question: Does the Constitution’s Rules of Proceedings Clause permit the houses of Congress to adopt internal parliamentary requirements under which a bill is deemed “passed” only if it receives supermajority support? This question is important. Indeed, the House already has such a rule in place, and any challenge …


Step Down, Justice Melvin, Bruce Ledewitz Dec 2011

Step Down, Justice Melvin, Bruce Ledewitz

Ledewitz Papers

Published scholarship collected from academic journals, law reviews, newspaper publications & online periodicals