Compromise and Representation: A Lecture by Associate Fellow Shany Mor
Monday, November 6, 2017
Arendt Center
4:45 pm – 6:00 pm
This event occurred on:
ABSTRACT:
My paper argues that representation is best understood, both normatively and historically, as emerging from legal positivism and the rule of law rather than from democracy as such. I propose a formal definition of decision, and then abstract from that to choice, habit, rule, norm, and law. When I focus only on authorized political decisions, I find that administrative, executive, bureaucratic, judicial, military, police, etc. decisions all have more in common with each other than any one of them has with law creation.
I further identify the four properties of law creation that make it so different and prove that on purely definitional grounds, such a decision cannot be made by a very small or very large number. I derive from this a definition of assembly and make the case for law-making by assembly with some formal connection to popular preference.
All this is ultimately tied to a more general statement on plurality as the fundamental condition of politics, and to a call for a renewed theoretical emphasis on parliamentarism as opposed to all its inadequate replacements (executive overreach, judicial activism, media-driven audience democracy, referendums, etc.).
In this sense, representation by assembly, with its output as general norms and its input a series of ritualized speech acts and circumscribed forms of public decision-making, create ongoing temporary compromises and long-term habits of compromise that secure popular sovereignty in a way that referendum democracy, “digital democracy,” entrenched rights enforced by courts, and populist executives cannot.
Date: Monday, November 6th
Location: Hannah Arendt Center
Time: 4:45pm - 6pm
Rsvp Required: Email [email protected]
Free & Open to the Public
My paper argues that representation is best understood, both normatively and historically, as emerging from legal positivism and the rule of law rather than from democracy as such. I propose a formal definition of decision, and then abstract from that to choice, habit, rule, norm, and law. When I focus only on authorized political decisions, I find that administrative, executive, bureaucratic, judicial, military, police, etc. decisions all have more in common with each other than any one of them has with law creation.
I further identify the four properties of law creation that make it so different and prove that on purely definitional grounds, such a decision cannot be made by a very small or very large number. I derive from this a definition of assembly and make the case for law-making by assembly with some formal connection to popular preference.
All this is ultimately tied to a more general statement on plurality as the fundamental condition of politics, and to a call for a renewed theoretical emphasis on parliamentarism as opposed to all its inadequate replacements (executive overreach, judicial activism, media-driven audience democracy, referendums, etc.).
In this sense, representation by assembly, with its output as general norms and its input a series of ritualized speech acts and circumscribed forms of public decision-making, create ongoing temporary compromises and long-term habits of compromise that secure popular sovereignty in a way that referendum democracy, “digital democracy,” entrenched rights enforced by courts, and populist executives cannot.
Date: Monday, November 6th
Location: Hannah Arendt Center
Time: 4:45pm - 6pm
Rsvp Required: Email [email protected]
Free & Open to the Public