Bulletin n. 1-2/2014
November 2014
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
  • Levinson Sanford
    Popular Sovereignty and the United States Constitution: Tensions in the Ackermanian Program
    in Yale Law Journal (The) , Volume 123, Issue 8 ,  2014
    The very title of Bruce Ackerman’s now three-volume masterwork, We the People, signifies his commitment to popular sovereignty and, beyond that, to the embrace of democratic inclusion as the leitmotif of American constitutionalism. But “popular sovereignty,” not to mention “democracy,” has many conceptions, and there is a tension within Ackerman’s overall project as to which of the varieties he is most comfortable with. The United States Constitution, though written (and ratified) in the name of “We the People,” nonetheless adopts a theory of “representative democracy” that is purposely designed to minimize to the vanishing point the ability of “the people” to have any direct role in making national-level political decisions. They are restricted to electing purported representatives, who will make decisions in their name, with or without genuine consultation. One can contrast this to American state constitutions, almost all of which include at least some aspect of direct democracy and many of which, with California being the most prominent example, allow vigorous popular participation in governance through initiative and referendum. So an obvious question is whether Ackerman simply feels constrained by the undoubted limits of the national Constitution—one lives with the Constitution one has, not the Constitution one might wish to have—or, on the contrary, whether he affirmatively embraces the particular crabbed form of popular sovereignty instantiated in the United States Constitution and rejects the more robust forms that are available not only in theory but also in the practices of many states (and foreign countries).
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