If "self-rule" signifies that the people collectively have freely decided some question of government, then some explanation will be required of the circumstances in which the people collectively can be said to have decided freely. I suspect that the word "free" will have to do a lot of work here. I can understand what it is for an individual to have decided freely, but the situation is more complicated in groups. Presumably some of the people will always have to be overruled for any decision to be taken in any very large group. Did those people decide freely?
In its simplest sense, "self-rule" might mean the absence of external domination of the group, leaving open the possibility of internal domination by one party of others within the group. If so the parallel between individual freedom and collective freedom becomes quite complicated. The U.S. Constitution is built around a conception of freedom as the absence of internal domination, which is very imperfectly captured by the concept of "self-rule". >===== Original Message From Discussion list for con law professors <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ===== > I don't think anything I said or implied suggests separating >democracy from majority rule. My point was that there are simple and complex >conceptions of 'democracy.' While both include majority rule, only the latter appeals >to moral and political concepts--equality, self-determination, deliberation -- >which explain the desirability of majority rule. These underlying explanatory >conditions of majority rule then in turn place constraints on the precise >kind of majority rule the polity might seek. > > With regard to "self-rule," for me it connects both individual freedom >and collective freedom. When I decide freely I am engaging in self-rule and >when the people decide freely, we are engaging in self-rule. The notion of >"self-rule" functions as a general or foundational term for referring to a >subject, whether an individual person or a collectivity of people, engaged in >governing itself. From my perspective, the fact that self-rule links the individual >and the many in this manner renders it an attractive term which contributes to >systematizing different, but interrelated, aspects of freedom. > >Bobby Lipkin >Widener University School of Law >Delaware
