Rick Hasen's web log
August 10, 2005
In the Election Law Mailbag
I have just received a review copy of Andrew Rehfled, The Concept of Constituency: Political Representation, Democratic Legitimacy, and Institutional Design (Cambridge, forthcoming October 2005). The book description:
- Every ten years United States congressional districts are drawn, physically constructing political representation based on where citizens live. Why is it done this way? Is territorial representation consistent with the broader normative ends of political representation for any large nation? And if not, how might random assignment provide a justifiable alternative to group representation? Using the case of the founding period of the United States and classic sources in western political theory to illustrate the argument, this book describes the conceptual, historical and normative features of the electoral constituency. Based on uncontroversial features of political legitimacy (like the idea that a representative should be accountable to those who elected him) it argues in favor of single member, electoral constituencies, each of which look like the nation they collectively represent. It argues that randomly assigning voters into permanent, national electoral constituencies would be worth considering in any large democratic nation.
• A novel thought experiment: assign all citizens into 435 random, national and permanent electoral constituencies for US Congress
• All politics is not local, it only appears that way because we elect our representatives based on where we live
• The standard of ‘one person one vote’ is overrated and leads us to endorse electoral systems that are contrary to broader aims of political representation
I met Andrew last winter and look forward very much to reading this book.
I also just received a reprint of Abner Greene's, Is There a First Amendment Defense for Bush v. Gore?, 80 Notre Dame Law Review 1643 (2005). I read this piece in draft and highly recommend it for those interested in the jurisprudence of Bush v. Gore (not that I agree with Abner's reading of the case).
Also, the Southern California Law Review symposium, "Symposium on the Impact of Direct Democracy," Volume 78, Number 4 (May 2005), is now available on Lexis and Westlaw.