Foundations of Majority Rule and its Application to Constitutional Courts
One of the most salient features of many constitutional democracies is the existence of constitutional courts that can control the constitutionality of statutory legislation. In order to decide whether to invalidate statutory provisions as unconstitutional, most constitutional courts use majority rule. In this paper, I argue that the main justifications provided for majority rule as...
How democratic is democracy? A question from the case of the popular consultations in Colombia.
The purpose of this paper is to analyse a new constitutional trend of democracy that is shaping the exploitation of natural resources in the Global South. As a result of recent Colombian Constitutional Court rulings and the appliance of constitutional participatory democracy mechanisms, local communities and authorities are able to hinder mining exploitation or oil...
Liberal Constitutionalism and the New Global Populism: A Legal-Philosophical Investigation
In recent years, many legal scholars and political scientists explicitly or implicitly agree that populism is a threat to liberal democratic constitutionalism. Nevertheless, much less clear is the assessment of the source of decay within liberal democratic constitutionalism. This paper will focus on two issues that become the root of crisis within liberal democratic constitutionalism....
Parliamentary Supremacy in the Commonwealth: Dominions and the struggle for legislative autonomy
The story of legislative autonomy in the Dominions typically ends with the incorporate of the Statute of Westminster. This overlooks the subsequent struggles within the Dominions to establish some form of parliamentary supremacy as an internal norm within their constitutional structures. This was particularly noticeable in those Dominions which possessed a unitary form of government,...
New technologies as an instrument for citizen engagement and enforcing the participatory dimension of the democratic principle
The incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into politics introduced fundamental changes to democratic societies and new formats in the relationship between citizens and elected officials, allowing a rekindling of their interactions. New technologies enable faster and easier communication and governments have been moving towards an Internet of Things (IoT) based framework, enabling citizen...
The Struggles of Majoritarian Democracy: An Incipient Latin American Trend Towards the Development of Dialogic Democracy
The present paper presents the struggles faced by contemporary societies in regard to Majoritarian Democracy — struggles which appear alongside the growing crisis of Representative Democracy. Latin America, tainted by the historical exclusion of social identity groups, is, therefore, the perfect stage to study such issues. Dissatisfaction in terms of social justice and political inclusion...