Counterconstitutionalism

Abstract:     
Democratic constitutionalism has often erected a high barrier separating the citizen from the state. This is paradoxical because the very promise of constitutionalism is to produce precisely the opposite result: to bind the citizen to the state, and to create and cultivate a constitutional culture that is anchored in participatory democracy. I have a name for this paradoxical state of affairs: counterconstitutionalism. In this article, I introduce and illustrate the concept of counterconstitutionalism with reference to bills of rights in constitutional states representing civil and common law traditions on four continents.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 55

Keywords: democracy, constitutionalism, Bills of Rights, citizenship, participatory democracy, liberal democracy, constitutional design, Canada, United States, South Africa, India, Germany

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