The United States, it is widely believed, is at a moment of constitutional crisis. At no time since the Civil War era has it seemed more likely that what James Madison called the “experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people”--the experiment in democratic constitutional self-governance--will fail. This article argues that one reason for this state of affairs is that the 'people' sense that they are no longer active participants in the experiment. While the historical etiology of this crisis is complex, and the forces involved not confined to the US, this article focuses on the crisis in the legitimacy of the Federal Judiciary--and the role that current orthodoxies in constitutional interpretation have played in fomenting that crisis.The immediate critical target of this article is contemporary jurisprudential uses of what is called “public meaning originalism,” specifically, and 'textualist originalism' more broadly, as a theory for the interpretation of those clauses in the US Constitution that refer to fundamental rights and freedoms. This concern with “textualism,” however, is primarily diagnostic. For, despite its relative unpopularity among most contemporary legal theorists, the application of “public meaning originalism” by the US Supreme Court is perfectly consistent with the dominant legal theoretical approach in the English-speaking world. The extremity of the Court's recent 'textualist' jurisprudence provides an excellent illustration, or reminder, of the dangers of legal positivist jurisprudence. In arguing against textualist originalism, this article defends a version of the anti-positivist distinction between legal rules and legal principles, most famously associated with the work of Ronald Dworkin. It argues, however, that this distinction cannot be captured by understanding constitutional principles in terms of moral principles, as Dworkin suggests. Instead, constitutional principles must be understood as deliberative principles of political association and communal self-determination. The primary subject of this article, then, is the character of fundamental constitutional law; our hope is that the current crises in democratic constitutional legitimacy can help make salient certain aspects of the relation between popular sovereignty and constitutional legitimacy that are harder to discern in less fractured political climates.This article begins, in Part One, with a consideration of the Roberts Court's recent jurisprudence, focusing on three landmark opinions issued in June of 2022: Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist. and West Virginia v EPA. The point of revisiting this recent history will not be--or will not only be--to decry these rulings as anti-democratic and constitutionally ill-founded. The point, rather, will be 1) to see these rulings as consolidations of the Court's newly asserted constitutional authority, and 2) show how contemporary positivist constitutional theory has helped prepare the way for the Court's manipulation of the constitutional order.Part Two begins to elaborate an anti-positivist alternative both to legal positivism and to natural law legal theory. In agreement with traditional natural law theorists, it is argued that the distinction between illegitimate and legitimate expressions of political authority depends on the degree to which a system of authority is directed toward a common good. In disagreement with those theorists, however, this article contends that the common good of a political community is determined by the communal deliberative activity of a political community, and that the deliberative determination of a common good is the normative foundation of that community.Part Three focuses on the First Amendment of the US Constitution with two aims in mind. First, to illustrate the account of constitutional law here advocated, it offers a reading of the First Amendment as an attempt to put into words a shared understanding among the ratifiers of the Bill of Rights of what this article calls 'the shape of citizenship' in our constitutional democracy. Second, it shows how the Court's recent opinions have radically subverted the last vestiges of this original connection between constitutional rights and the foundational principles of constitutional self-government. In Dobbs v Jackson, in particular, the Court asserts an understanding of constitutional rights as merely a particular structural variant of positive law, and in so doing effectively makes the legal order a sovereign power over the people, rather than an expression of and vehicle for their common self-determination.

Mobilizing for Democracy is an in-depth study into how ordinary citizens and their organizations mobilize to deepen democracy. Featuring a collection of new empirical case studies from Angola, Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, this important new book illustrates how forms of political mobilization, such as protests, social participation, activism, litigation and lobbying, engage with the formal institutions of representative democracy in ways that are core to the development of democratic politics. No other volume has brought together examples from such a broad Southern spectrum and covering such a diversity of actors: rural and urban dwellers, transnational activists, religious groups, politicians and social leaders. The cases illuminate the crucial contribution that citizen mobilization makes to democratization and the building of state institutions, and reflect the uneasy relationship between citizens and the institutions that are designed to foster their political participation.

American identity has always been capacious as a concept but narrow in its application. Citizenship has mostly been about being here, either through birth or residence. The territorial premises for citizenship have worked to resolve the peculiar challenges of American identity. But globalization is detaching identity from location. What used to define American was rooted in American space. Now one can be anywhere and be an American, politically or culturally. Against that backdrop, it becomes difficult to draw the boundaries of human community in a meaningful way. Longstanding notions of democratic citizenship are becoming obsolete, even as we cling to them. Beyond Citizenship charts the trajectory of American citizenship and shows how American identity is unsustainable in the face of globalization. Peter J. Spiro describes how citizenship law once reflected and shaped the American national character. Spiro explores the histories of birthright citizenship, naturalization, dual citizenship, and how those legal regimes helped reinforce an otherwise fragile national identity. But on a shifting global landscape, citizenship status has become increasingly divorced from any sense of actual community on the ground. As the bonds of citizenship dissipate, membership in the nation-state becomes less meaningful. The rights and obligations distinctive to citizenship are now trivial. Naturalization requirements have been relaxed, dual citizenship embraced, and territorial birthright citizenship entrenched--developments that are all irreversible. Loyalties, meanwhile, are moving to transnational communities defined in many different ways: by race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, and sexual orientation. These communities, Spiro boldly argues, are replacing bonds that once connected people to the nation-state, with profound implications for the future of governance. Learned, incisive, and sweeping in scope, Beyond Citizenship offers a provocative look at how globalization is changing the very definition of who we are and where we belong.

"Learn About the United States" is intended to help permanent residents gain a deeper understanding of U.S. history and government as they prepare to become citizens. The product presents 96 short lessons, based on the sample questions from which the civics portion of the naturalization test is drawn. An audio CD that allows students to listen to the questions, answers, and civics lessons read aloud is also included. For immigrants preparing to naturalize, the chance to learn more about the history and government of the United States will make their journey toward citizenship a more meaningful one.

Interest in citizenship has never been higher. But what does it mean to be a citizen in a modern, complex community? Richard Bellamy approaches the subject of citizenship from a political perspective and, in clear and accessible language, addresses the complexities behind this highly topical issue.

Oleksandra Keudel proposes a novel explanation for why some local governments in hybrid regimes enable citizen participation while others restrict it. She argues that mechanisms for citizen participation are by-products of political dynamics of informal business-political (patronal) networks that seek domination over local governments. Against the backdrop of either competition or coordination between patronal networks in their localities, municipal leaders cherry-pick citizen participation mechanisms as a tactic to sustain their own access to resources and functions of local governments. This argument is based on an in-depth comparative analysis of patronal network arrangements and the adoption of citizen participation mechanisms in five urban municipalities in Ukraine during 2015-2019: Chernivtsi, Kharkiv, Kropyvnytskyi, Lviv, and Odesa. Fifty-seven interviews with citizen participation experts, local politicians and officials, representatives of civil society and the media, as well as utilization of secondary analytical sources, official government data, and media reports provide a rich basis for an investigation of context-specific choices of municipal leaders that result in varying mechanisms for citizen participation.

Citizenship in a Republic is the title of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910. One notable passage from the speech is referred to as "The Man in the Arena": It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

Sexual citizenship has become a key concept in the social sciences. It describes the rights and responsibilities of citizens in sexual and intimate life, including debates over equal marriage and women's human rights, as well as shaping thinking about citizenship more generally. But what does it mean in a continually changing political landscape of gender and sexuality? In this timely intervention, Diane Richardson examines the normative underpinnings and varied critiques of sexual citizenship, asking what they mean for its future conceptual and empirical development, as well as for political activism. Clearly written, the book shows how the field of sexuality and citizenship connects to a range of important areas of debate including understandings of nationalism, identity, neoliberalism, equality, governmentality, individualization, colonialism, human rights, globalization and economic justice. Ultimately this book calls for a critical rethink of sexual citizenship. Illustrating her argument with examples drawn from across the globe, Richardson contends that this is essential if scholars want to understand the sexual politics that made the field of sexuality and citizenship studies what it is today, and to enable future analyses of the sexual inequalities that continue to mark the global order.

A significant addition to the growing body of literature on citizenship, this wide-ranging overview focuses on the importance, and changing nature, of citizenship. It introduces the varied discourses and theories that have arisen in recent years, and looks toward future scholarship in the field. Offers an analytical assessment of the various thematic discourses and provides guidance in pulling together those discrete themes into a larger, more comprehensive framework Identifies the four broadly conceived themes that shape the many discourses on contemporary citizenship – inclusion, erosion, withdrawal, and expansion Includes a thorough introduction to the subject

States have historically led in rights expansion for marginalized populations and remain leaders today on the rights of undocumented immigrants.