The Case for Repealing the Second Amendment? The Historical Barriers to Constitutional Change

The controversy surrounding the Second Amendment—“the right of the people to keep and bear arms”—is, to a large extent, historical in nature, redolent of other matters in this country’s legal and constitutional past. But the historical analogies that might support the Amendment’s repeal do not permit easy conclusions. The issue demands that legal historians venture beyond familiar territory to confront unavoidable problems at the intersection of theory and practice and of constitutional law and popular constitutionalism. An interdisciplinary analysis of Lichtman’s Repeal the Second Amendment illuminates the political, legal, and constitutional dimensions—as well as the perils—of undertaking the arduous amending process permitted by Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

Deliberative, Republican, and Egalitarian Institutional Alternatives for Popular Constitutionalism

Este artículo examina y propone alternativas institucionales para el constitucionalismo popular. La propuesta es una combinación progresiva de instituciones que buscan dotar a la ciudadanía con el poder final para determinar qué significa una constitución, contribuyendo a asegurar su libertad republicana, implementando mecanismos de deliberación, al tiempo que es respetuoso de una forma particular de comprender la igualdad política. El artículo comienza con una descripción del constitucionalismo popular y de los principios que considero que deberían fundamentar la teoría. Luego, procede a examinar críticamente diversas propuestas institucionales presentes en la literatura. Después de mostrar las áreas en las que dichas propuestas se quedan cortas en el esfuerzo de encarnar los principios aquí defendidos, el artículo aboga por la implementación de cuatro mecanismos que, según sostendré, sí se acercan más a dichos objetivos.

Popular Constitutionalism Applied

The Patriot Rebellion that swept across the West, driven by a mature infrastructure of conservative interests, counties, states, and individuals challenged the federal government directly over access to federal lands and economic development. States, led by Utah, claimed the power of eminent domain over federal lands and demanded that the federal government relinquished most of its land to them. Counties once again demanded control over federal land use planning, this time by arguing that the federal government needed to coordinate with county officials to ensure that federal land use plans met county needs.

Mexico 2018: An Opportunity for Popular Constitutionalism

In 2018 Mexicans chose the most profound political change since the transition to democracy, leaving behind what in another work I have called authoritarian constitutionalism. The alternation has meant a change of regime in which a social transformation is announced. The transformation can take different paths and must be accompanied by ideas that inspire it. In this frame of mind, popular constitutionalism can be a useful theory in order for the transformation to take a democratic, participative and egalitarian direction, since it fosters political participation and democratic equality. It is time to forego the elitist theories of constitutional law and the minimalist understandings of democracy.

Reactive vs structural approach: A public law response to populism

Contemporary scholarship mainly focuses on the crisis of political representation as the key facilitator behind the emergence of populism. If so, populism urges public law to revisit and rethink institutional designs. This article addresses two possible responses to populism. On one hand, an intuitive response could be to hamper popular participation by avoiding plebiscites, referendums or any other kind of public consultation. Alternatively, it is possible to respond to populism from a structural point of view. In my opinion, to resist populism public law should take into account the lack of responsiveness and accountability of representative systems. The article puts forward a proposal in that direction; it advances a response to populism consisting of new institutional systems that generate strong participatory mechanisms to incorporate ‘the popular’. In doing so, the article uses the new Latin American Constitutionalism as an example of both the potentialities and difficulties of designing institutional systems in public law. In the wake of rising populism, it contributes to the existing debate by criticising populism and its constitutional expression, as well as developing arguments in favour of popular constitutionalism.