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This volume analyses constitutional ratification procedures, examines their nature, origins, history, and especially the potential justifications for their use. The author offers a comprehensive demonstration of how constitution-making recommendations can be evaluated and tested from a normative and theoretical perspective.
List of contents
- 1. Questioning Ratification
- 1: Basic concepts
- 2: Ratification
- 3: What kind of justification?
- 4: Why care about ratification?
- 5: Structure
- 2. Ratification Beyond (And Before) Constitutions
- 1: Agency law
- 2: Ratification in treaty law
- 3: Labor law and collective bargaining
- 4: Conclusions
- 3. The Invention of Constitutional Ratification
- 1: The Berkshire Constitutionalists
- 2: The Mechanicks' Union of New York City
- 3: Ratification by state conventions: Philadelphia
- 4: Ratification by Convention: Georgia
- 5: Conclusion
- 4. Making the Constituent Power Speak
- 1: The theory of constituent power
- 2: Finding constituent power justifications
- 3: Constituent power dispersed
- 4: Conclusion
- 5. The Unalienable Right of the Berkshire Constitutionalists
- 1: Historical context, theoretical context
- 2: Constituent power rooted in contractualism
- 3: Constitutional creation and constituent power
- 4: The Sleeping Sovereign and the Unique Site Justification
- 5: Conclusion
- 6. Ignorance and the Constituent Power
- 1: What kind of choice?
- 2: Condorcet's prediction
- 3: Ignorant framers
- 4: Information shortcuts
- 5: Educating the people
- 6: Conclusion
- 7. Representation Through Accountability
- 1: Representation justification
- 2: Ratification's potential role
- 3: Ratification as accountability mechanism
- 4: Objections
- 5: Conclusion
- 8. Legitimacy Types and Procedures
- 1: What is legitimacy?
- 2: Legitimate constitutions
- 3: Creating legitimacy
- 4: Pathways to constitutional legitimacy
- 5: Conclusions
- 9. Legitimation Device
- 1: Substantive legitimation
- 2: Procedural moral legitimation
- 3: Procedural sociological legitimation
- 4: Conclusion
- 10. Conclusion
- 1: Summary of findings
- 2: Lessons and questions
- 3: Context dependent reasons
About the author
Jeffrey A. Lenowitz is the Meyer and W. Walter Jaffe Assistant Professor of Politics at Brandeis University, where he researches and teaches political theory. He received his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at Columbia University and held a Prize Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He is also a faculty member of the History of Ideas Program at Brandeis.
Summary
This volume analyses constitutional ratification procedures, examines their nature, origins, history, and especially the potential justifications for their use. The author offers a comprehensive demonstration of how constitution-making recommendations can be evaluated and tested from a normative and theoretical perspective.
Additional text
Constitutional Ratification Without Reason is one of the most illuminating books I've read in years about the deep conundra surrounding the notion of constitutional "legitimacy" in an age that valorizes "popular sovereignty." Lenowitz's skepticism especially about purported popular ratification of an already-drafted constitution is persuasive and should have great impact on both theoretical discussions and the actualities of constitutional formation.
