Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-12-2008
Abstract
This talk, prepared for delivery at the 2008 Wayne State University
Humanities Center Faculty Fellows Conference, explores the relationship between
popular sovereignty and legality. Legality – in particular, legal rights entrenched in a
constitution – often is thought to conflict with popular sovereignty in a way that
mirrors the supposed tension between individual autonomy and legal authority.
Both perceived conflicts, however, rest in part upon the problematic idea that the
law knows better than legal subjects what to do in particular cases. In fact, legal
authority is best justified as a means of resolving disputes about what to do in
particular cases. A dispute-resolution account of law shifts the focus away from the
supposed conflict between law on the one hand and individual autonomy or popular
sovereignty on the other, and toward the function of law as a means of settling
conflict about, among other things, what autonomy and popular sovereignty entail.
In particular, the dispute-resolution account suggests that judicially enforced
constitutional rights might serve as a relatively neutral means of settling
disagreements about the relationship between political majorities and political
minorities.
Recommended Citation
Christopher J. Peters,
Popular Sovereignty And Legality,
(2008).
Available at:
https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac/878