Legislation, Planning, and Deliberation
Files
Description
Any government must protect its subjects and allow them a chance to live tolerable lives. These tasks require the occasional threat of force to coordinate the actions of its citizens and officials around policies to secure these effects. A liberal democratic government asks more of itself, insisting that the people play some role in directing (possibly coercive) state policies and providing legal and political space for people to take private actions to determine the course of their own lives. In a modern (representative) democracy, the legislature normally directs and regulates coercive state power by making laws and directing their enforcement, and anyone subject to legal force is entitled to a justification, in a suitable forum, as to why her interests are to be subordinated to those of others or the public interest. This justificatory burden requires that a statute be seen as intentionally aimed at furthering some genuine public interest.
Source Publication
Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms
Source Editors/Authors
Hélène Landemore, Jon Elster
Publication Date
2012
Recommended Citation
Ferejohn, John A., "Legislation, Planning, and Deliberation" (2012). Faculty Chapters. 493.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/493
