Political Constitutionalism and the Value of Constitution Making
Marco Goldoni
University of Antwerp - Centre for Law and Cosmopolitan Values
March 7, 2012
Abstract:
The debate on political constitutionalism has completely neglected the dimension of constitution making. This is probably due to the reason that constitution making usually brings with it undesirable outcomes like entrenchment of rights or structure. These outcomes do not respect reasonable disagreement among citizens because they violate the only fair system for settling this disagreement: majority rule and equal vote. This article aims to show that political constitutionalists may regret the complete absence of any claim about constitution making. Either they are overlooking certain problems inherent to the electoral process that is supposed to tackle with disagreement or, even worse, they are downplaying the entrenching effect of ordinary political processes by ignoring the redemptive properties of constituent power. In both cases, their claims are actually undermining the political dimension of constitutionalism.
The debate on political constitutionalism has completely neglected the dimension of constitution making. This is probably due to the reason that constitution making usually brings with it undesirable outcomes like entrenchment of rights or structure. These outcomes do not respect reasonable disagreement among citizens because they violate the only fair system for settling this disagreement: majority rule and equal vote. This article aims to show that political constitutionalists may regret the complete absence of any claim about constitution making. Either they are overlooking certain problems inherent to the electoral process that is supposed to tackle with disagreement or, even worse, they are downplaying the entrenching effect of ordinary political processes by ignoring the redemptive properties of constituent power. In both cases, their claims are actually undermining the political dimension of constitutionalism.
Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2018023
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