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An Account of the Democratic Status of Constitutional Rights

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Gonzalez Ricoy, Iñigo [UCL]

The paper makes a twofold contribution. Firstly, it advances a preliminary account of the conditions that need to obtain for constitutional rights to be democratic. Secondly, in so doing, it defends precommitment-based theories from a criticism raised by Jeremy Waldron-namely, that constitutional rights do not become any more democratic when they are democratically adopted, for the people could adopt undemocratic policies without such policies becoming democratic as a result. The paper shows that the reductio applies to political rights, yet not to non-political rights, such as reproductive, environmental, or privacy rights. The democratic status of the former is process-independent. The latter, by contrast, are democratic precisely when they are adopted by democratic means. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article) – Article de recherche
Access type Accès restreint
Publication date 2013
Language Anglais
Journal information "Res Publica : a journal of moral, legal and social philosophy" - Vol. 19, no. 3, p. 241-256 (2013)
Peer reviewed yes
Publisher Springer Netherlands
e-issn 1572-8692
issn 1356-4765
Publication status Publié
Affiliation UCL - SSH/ISP - Institut supérieur de philosophie
Links
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Bibliographic reference Gonzalez Ricoy, Iñigo. An Account of the Democratic Status of Constitutional Rights. In: Res Publica : a journal of moral, legal and social philosophy, Vol. 19, no. 3, p. 241-256 (2013)
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/160566