Posted by Ilya Somin:
Can We Make the Constitution More Democratic?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_10_21-2007_10_27.shtml#1193231703
Recent years have seen a revival of proposals to reform the
Constitution in order to make it more democratic. University of Texas
law professor Sandy Levinson has recently published [1]a prominent
book on the subject, as has well-known political scientist and pundit
[2]Larry Sabato. In [3]our contribution to a symposium on
constitutional reform , William and Mary law professor Neal Devins and
I raise some questions about both the desirability and feasibility of
proposals to democratize the Constitution. Here's an excerpt from the
abstract:
Recent years have seen renewed calls to revise the Constitution to
make it more democratic. Unfortunately, efforts to �democratize� the
Constitution face serious obstacles that advocates of reform have
largely ignored. In particular, they have failed to grapple with the
reality of widespread political ignorance, which both reduces the
extent to which the Constitution can ever be fully democratic and
makes the reform process more difficult.
Part I of this article notes that advocates of �democratizing� the
Constitution rarely specify the theory of democratic participation
they would like the Constitution to conform to. This is a very
significant omission. There is more than one theory of
participation and different theories have widely divergent
implications for constitutional reform. Some theories such as
�deliberative democracy,� imply a much higher level of political
knowledge in the electorate than is likely to be feasible in the
foreseeable future....
Part III considers the implications of political ignorance and
substantive concerns for the actual process of constitutional
change. Widespread ignorance is likely to reduce the quality of
constitutional reforms that can be instituted, since it might lead
voters to support deeply flawed institutional reforms and create
opportunities for manipulation by political elites. These dangers
are heightened by the reality that any major constitutional changes
are likely to occur as a result of a major political or economic
crisis....
References
1.
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Undemocratic-Constitution-People-Correct/dp/0195307518
2.
http://www.amazon.com/More-Perfect-Constitution-Proposals-Revitalize/dp/0802716210/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-8541490-4135020?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193231302&sr=1-1
3. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1009268
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