Public Law and Democracy in the United Kingdom and the United States of America

This bold and powerfully argued book has two themes. The `minor' theme is that the content and direction of both constitutional and administrative law are integrally related. The `major' theme is that their nature and content can only be properly understood against the background political theory which a society actually espouses, or against such a background which a particular commentator believes a society should espouse. Public Law and Democracy in the United Kingdom and United States of America brings the fruits of writings in political science and political theory to bear on the issues of public law. A critical examination of the centralist democratic views of Dicey is followed by an extensive discussion of a variety of pluralist theories of democracy, tracing their development in the USA from the early twentieth century to their more sophisticated recent versions. A similar analysis is applied to a cross-section of English pluralists, and in all cases the discussion is followed by a criticism of the views expounded and an exploration of their implications for public law. Considerable space is devoted to the examination of Rawls' views and their implications for public law and to a discussion of Republicanism and radical participatory democracy arguments.