Review by Choice Review
Nino's eminently readable synthesis of legal, moral, and political debates focuses on the tension between democratic politics and constitutionalism. He presents democracy as a part of constitutional ideal and practice; both are equally grounded in norms of "practical reasoning." For Nino, "the value of democracy is of an epistemic nature ... democracy is the most reliable procedure for obtaining access to the knowledge of moral principles." This must be deliberative democracy, however, committed to integrating moral concepts and political interests--to a nonperfectionist transformation of preferences via the knowledge, impartiality, and autonomous principles generated as well as presupposed by collective argumentation and majority decision. Assessing deliberative democracy in its institutional context (with provocative reflections on the presidency, federalism, representation, parties, and judicial review), Nino not only supplies needed detail to more abstract debates over the legitimate resolution of complexity and consensus, of fact and norm, he also shows how collective deliberation, "a valid set of rights and a legitimate organization of power," can be mutually supporting and even "self-correcting." His analysis of impartiality, equality, and autonomy, including their deliberative "surrogates," bolsters a notion of objective democratic legitimacy against thin theories of interest-aggregation. Graduate; faculty. D. A. Morris; University of Virginia
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
