TY  - BOOK
AU  - Posner,Richard A.
TI  - Law, Pragmatism, and Democracy
SN  - 9780674042292
AV  - KF384 .P67 2003
U1  - 340/.11 21
PY  - 2009///]
CY  - Cambridge, MA
PB  - Harvard University Press
KW  - Criminal justice, Administration of
KW  - United States
KW  - Democracy
KW  - Justice, Administration of
KW  - Pragmatism
KW  - Rule of law
KW  - LAW / General
KW  - bisacsh
N1  - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Preface --; Introduction: Pragmatic Liberalism and the Plan of the Book --; CHAPTER ONE. Pragmatism: Philosophical versus Everyday --; CHAPTER TWO. Legal Pragmatism --; CHAPTER THREE. John Dewey on Democracy and Law --; CHAPTER FOUR. Two Concepts of Democracy --; CHAPTER FIVE. Democracy Defended --; CHAPTER SIX. The Concepts Applied --; CHAPTER SEVEN. Kelsen versus Hayek: Pragmatism, Economics, and Democracy --; CHAPTER EIGHT. Legality and Necessity --; CHAPTER NINE. Pragmatic Adjudication: The Case of Bush v. Gore --; CHAPTER TEN. Purposes versus Consequences in First Amendment Analysis --; Conclusion --; Index; restricted access
N2  - A liberal state is a representative democracy constrained by the rule of law. Richard Posner argues for a conception of the liberal state based on pragmatic theories of government. He views the actions of elected officials as guided by interests rather than by reason and the decisions of judges by discretion rather than by rules. He emphasizes the institutional and material, rather than moral and deliberative, factors in democratic decision making.Posner argues that democracy is best viewed as a competition for power by means of regular elections. Citizens should not be expected to play a significant role in making complex public policy regarding, say, taxes or missile defense. The great advantage of democracy is not that it is the rule of the wise or the good but that it enables stability and orderly succession in government and limits the tendency of rulers to enrich or empower themselves to the disadvantage of the public. Posner’s theory steers between political theorists’ concept of deliberative democracy on the left and economists’ public-choice theory on the right. It makes a significant contribution to the theory of democracy—and to the theory of law as well, by showing that the principles that inform Schumpeterian democratic theory also inform the theory and practice of adjudication. The book argues for law and democracy as twin halves of a pragmatic theory of American government
UR  - https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674042292?locatt=mode:legacy
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780674042292
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780674042292/original
ER  -