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Political Constitutionalism and the Question of Constitution‐Making
Author(s) -
Goldoni Marco
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/raju.12050
Subject(s) - constitutionalism , constitution , politics , voting , regret , dimension (graph theory) , law , political science , power (physics) , law and economics , majority rule , democracy , sociology , mathematics , statistics , physics , quantum mechanics , pure mathematics
The debate on political constitutionalism has entirely neglected the constitution‐making dimension. This is probably due to the fact that constitution‐making usually brings with it undesirable outcomes such as the entrenchment of rights or structures. These outcomes do not respect reasonable disagreement among citizens because they violate the only fair system for settling disagreement: majority rule and equal voting rights. This article argues that political constitutionalists may regret the absence of any claim about constitution‐making. Either they are overlooking certain problems inherent to the electoral process that is supposed to tackle 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 undermine the political dimension of constitutionalism.