Description
Constitutional democracy is a political hybrid, the product of an uneasy union between, on the one hand, the normative theories of constitutionalism and democracy and, on the other, the desire to live under what James Madison called free government. In this engaging and provocative work, Walter F. Murphy combines a lifetime's study of constitutions and democracy with traditional storytelling to answer fundamental questions about constitutional democracy: How is it created? How is it maintained? How can it be adapted to changing circumstances? Murphy begins with a definitional section on constitutions, constitutional texts, constitutionalism, and democracy. Next, he tells the story of how a democracy is established within the context of a fictional constitutional convention for a fictional country.