Deliberative Democracy and the Institutions of Judicial Review

In this book, Christopher F. Zurn shows why a normative theory of deliberative democratic constitutionalism yields the best understanding of the legitimacy of constitutional review. He further argues that this function should be institutionalized in a complex, multi-location structure including not only independent constitutional courts but also legislative and executive self-review that would enable interbranch constitutional dialogue and constitutional amendment through deliberative civic constitutional forums. Drawing on sustained critical analyses of diverse pluralist and deliberative democratic arguments concerning the legitimacy of judicial review, Zurn concludes that constitutional review is necessary to ensure the procedural requirements for legitimate democratic self-rule through deliberative cooperation. Claiming that pure normative theory is not sufficient to settle issues of institutional design, Zurn draws on empirical and comparative research to propose reformed institutions of constitutional review that encourage the development of fundamental law as an ongoing project of democratic deliberation and decision.

Browse Our Catalog.

View More In Philosophy.

Law and the Unconscious is the first work of the French legal philosopher Pierre Legendre to appear in English. Trained as a lawyer, a historian and a psychoanalyst, the work of Pierre Legendre has consistently confronted law with the teaching and me...

This book examines the central issue in property theory, as it intersects with law: what property is, as an idea, and the power that claimed individual property rights should have against competing public goals. Drawing upon areas as diverse as land ...

Is the science of moral cognition usefully modeled on aspects of Universal Grammar? Are human beings born with an innate "moral grammar" that causes them to analyze human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness as they a...

Language ideology is a concept developed in linguistic anthropology to explain the ways in which ideas about the definition and functions of language can become linked with social discourses and identities. In Entextualizing Domestic Violence, Jennif...

This book discusses one of the central problems in the philosophy of law--the question of legal determinacy. Is the law a seamless web or are there gaps? Bix argues that the major re-thinking of the common and "common sense" views about law that have...

This book is an innovative contribution to analytical jurisprudence.  It is mainly based on the distinct premises of linguistic philosophy and Carnapian semantics, but also addresses the issues of institutional philosophy, social pragmatism, and leg...

Lawyers and the law have long been the object of popular criticism and satire for the obscurity and incomprehensibility of their language. Legal Discourse provides a novel historical and systematic account of the language of the legal institution tog...

Over the last several decades legal scholars have plumbed law's rhetorical life. Scholars have done so under various rubrics, with law and literature being among the most fruitful venues for the exploration of law's rhetoric and the way rhetoric shap...

This collection brings together the best contemporary philosophical work in the area of intersection between philosophy of language and the law. Some of the contributors are philosophers of language who are interested in applying advances in philosop...

The essays in this volume reflect several important and widely-discussed issues in legal theory. One set of issues may be characterized as legal hermeneutics, a consideration of the practices governing the retrieval and determination of meaning from ...