Law's Republic

Michelman, Frank I.

doi:10.2307/796539

Cited by 317 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…These activities-symbolic or substantive-allow elected officials to distinguish themselves from other candidates. Making "good" public policy further affirms politicians' fitness for office among voters and interest groups (Esterling, 2004;Fenno, 1978;Sunstein, 1988).…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Democrats especially share ideological inclinations toward making criminal justice practices more racially just (King & Smith, 2005). Second, elected officials have electoral and institutional incentives to appear to remedy social problems (Esterling, 2004;Mayhew, 1974;Sunstein, 1988). Policymaking signals to the electorate that their representatives perform their duties to "solve" problems like racial disparities that have become acute since the late 1990s.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

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The Politics of Racial Disparity Reform: Racial Inequality and Criminal Justice Policymaking in the States

Donnelly

2016

Am J Crim Just

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Racial inequalities in criminal justice are pressing problems for policymakers. Prior literature suggests elected officials promulgate punitive, racially disparate criminal justice policies due to partisanship and racial fears, but scholarship has yet to explain how and why elected officials address racial problems in criminal processing. This article introduces the framework of racial disparity reform policymaking. A racial disparity reform is a policy that seeks to reduce distinctions in criminal justice institutions' treatment of racial groups. Elected officials pursue these policies due to ideological beliefs in civil rights ideals and political interests in appearing to solve social problems. Using an original database of policy enactments, this article first presents the distribution and types of reform measures adopted by elected officials in all 50 states between 1998 and 2011. It then examines social and political explanations for when state legislatures and executives adopt racial disparity reforms. Policy enactment is predicted by worsening problems of racial disproportion in criminal processing, Democratic control of elected branches, and the absence of judicial efforts to improve racial fairness within a state's criminal justice system. Similar dynamics encourage the development of different measures types within policies. Such ideological and problem-solving explanations for racial disparity reform show a potential for elected officials to forge more racially just criminal justice practices.

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Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 96%

mentioning

confidence: 98%

The Politics of Racial Disparity Reform: Racial Inequality and Criminal Justice Policymaking in the States

Donnelly

2016

Am J Crim Just

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“…The mobilisation needed for republican polities is greater as this belief must not only be generated in the polity and its institutions, but also in a 'fund of public normative references' upon which 'subjects draw both for identity and, by the same token, for moral and political freedom'. 83 These references need not be as tightly scripted as a set of common values, in that they will not typically determine the context in which it is appropriate to apply one argument rather than another, but must provide a shared sense of what may count as valued action. 84 Without them, deliberation cannot take place as no shared justification for action can emerge.…”

Section: A Polity-building and Commitment: The Performative Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…49 This participation creates a series of shared references and narratives upon which participants can draw, and which serve as the basis for future normative dialogue. Not all participants will necessarily agree upon how the debate is resolved, but a consensus will emerge about how to vision the problem, categorise it, stipulate what is relevant and what is distinct.…”

Section: D) Self-governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Reconstitution of European Public Spheres

Chalmers

2003

European Law Journal

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The strength of participation in its political processes has increasingly become the yardstick against which the legitimacy of the European Union is measured. Yet experiments in deliberative and participatory democracy suggest that their practice invariably falls short of their lofty ideals. A reason is their failure to consider the process of communication itself. As understanding of communication is constituted through a number of surrounding communicative contexts, communication, per se, can never be said to be good or bad. More important is a constitutional framework for communication which provides the contexts-performative, institutional and epistemic-that enable communication to contribute to particular, desirable ideals. This piece will argue that a deliberative approach to European governance involves a process of justification in which the three practical tasks of the European Union-polity-building, problem-solving and the negotiation of political community-are debated and resolved around the four values that have underpinned the development of politics as a productive process-those of transformation, validity, relationality and self-government. The organisational reform required for this involves a wideranging revisiting of the structures of the European polity.

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“…This is a very abstract statement, but it points to the normative core of the democratic ideal: When we speak of``democratic legitimacy,'' the idea is that citizens must be able to regard themselves not only as the addressees but also as the ultimate authors of the basic laws and constitutional essentials that in turn validate specific exercises of coercive political power. The reference is to an ongoing procedure of justification (Michelman 1988;Habermas 1992) which is guided by reasons, values and principles that can be accepted as relevant by the people who are affected by them 4 (even if these decisions conflict with individual preferences and outlooks) and who are committed to finding mutually justifiable terms of cooperation. 5 The question, therefore, arises whether this idea of democracy can be disconnected from the concepts of territoriality and nationality.…”

Section: European Integration and Democratic Legitimacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Denationalization and the Very Idea of Democratic Constitutionalism: The Case of the European Community

Gerstenberg¹

2001

Ratio Juris

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Within the current debates about Euro-constitutionalism, the conventional options are either to defend a vision of the European Union (EU) which separates global economic law from national sovereignty, and thus relies on the legitimizing powers of free markets, or to regard the legitimation problem (at least under current conditions) as beyond solution: This view argues that any further progress towards an ever closer Union would inevitably increase the legitimation deficit and that therefore the capacity for political action of the nation state should be protected or restored. This paper seeks to break the stranglehold of the, as is argued, false dichotomy (global markets vs. national democracy), and it argues that an extension of democracy beyond the nation state is possible.

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Law's Republic

Cited by 317 publications

References 0 publications

The Politics of Racial Disparity Reform: Racial Inequality and Criminal Justice Policymaking in the States

The Politics of Racial Disparity Reform: Racial Inequality and Criminal Justice Policymaking in the States

The Reconstitution of European Public Spheres

Denationalization and the Very Idea of Democratic Constitutionalism: The Case of the European Community

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