ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the four main arguments that contemporary legal and political philosophers have employed to cut the Gordian knot of constitutional democracy. All four seek to redefine the terms of the opposition so as to render them compatible. The first two arguments include: assimilating democracy into constitutionalism and emphasizing the importance of a framework of rights and liberties as necessary conditions of citizenship; and insisting, more modestly, that certain rights and rules are simply inherent to, and so necessary for, democratic procedures. The last two arguments include: attempting to synthesize these two and emphasizing the implicit constitutional substance of democratic procedures; and conceiving the constitution as the outcome of a democratic process. In A Theory of Justice John Rawls observed how the principle of participation is intimately related to the contractarian argument. The chapter discusses prominent examples of each of these four theses. It also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.