Executive Primacy, Populism, and Public Law

Authors

Peter Cane

Abstract

As the articles in this Symposium suggest, populism and authoritarianism present ongoing challenges not only to liberal democracy but also to its legal underpinnings. Manipulation, avoidance, evasion, and outright rejection of the constitutional and legal frameworks of liberal democracy are features of populist authoritarianism. The basic argument of this article is that liberal-democratic public law and legal theory no longer satisfy human needs and desires because they were conceived in worlds that no longer exist, when the main pre-occupation was to secure liberty, not equality. The aim of the article is to explain the inherited structure of our public law and theory and the main events and developments that have produced this mismatch between public law and social aspiration.

First Page

527

Recommended Citation

Peter Cane, Executive Primacy, Populism, and Public Law, 28 Wash. Int’l L.J. 527 (2019).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol28/iss2/10