Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Habermas, Jürgen - Cass R. Sunstein (review date 18 August 1996)

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Cass R. Sunstein (review date 18 August 1996)

SOURCE: "Democracy Isn't What You Think," in The New York Times Book Review, August 18, 1996, p. 18.

[Below, Sunstein reviews the question of political legitimacy addressed in Between Facts and Norms, especially Habermas's concept of "deliberative democracy."]

Most people know that the Constitution's First Amendment provides the rights to freedom of speech and to the free exercise of religion. But in the first Congress some people seriously proposed that the First Amendment should contain another right: the right on the part of constituents "to instruct" their representatives how to vote. The first Congress ultimately rejected the proposal. Roger Sherman made the central argument against it. In Sherman's view, representatives had a "duty to meet others from the different parts of the Union, and consult…. If they were to be guided by instructions, there would be no use in...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Jürgen Habermas with Boris Frankel (interview date November 1973)
   2. Martin Jay (review date 9 November 1986)
   3. Onora O'Neill (review date 22 November 1990)
   4. Douglas Kellner (review date March 1992)
   5. David Weberman (review date July 1992)
   6. Frederick J. Antczak (review date November 1992)
   7. Peter Dews (review date 13 May 1993)
   8. William Outhwaite (review date May 1994)
   9. Per Fjelstad (review date November 1994)
   10. Dieter Misgeld (review date March 1995)
   11. Richard A. Posner (review date 6 May 1996)
   12. Cass R. Sunstein (review date 18 August 1996)
   13. Timothy Dykstal (review date Fall 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright