Democracy and Truth

 

My Hornbook review of Sophia Rosenfeld's fascinating Democracy and Truth: A Short History is now up at 3:16 AM Magazine here.

Review of Democratic Theory Naturalized in The Journal of Value Inquiry

So delighted to see this thoughtful review of my Democratic Theory Naturalized: The Foundations of Distilled Populism by Daniel Layman. It's very generous, so I'm quite grateful and have but a couple of teensy nits I can't help but tug at.

The first one involves a sentence that suggests I don't believe in judicial review. I probably shouldn't blame Layman for this. Likely I was insufficiently clear on the matter in my book: perhaps I gave a misleading impression of my take on the judiciary when I defended a limited Reversal theory along the lines pushed by Teddy Roosevelt in his later, Progressive days. But, with or without Reversal, I'm a firm supporter of an independent judiciary and, more generally, the rule of law. Without that, I don't think there can be anything like authentic democracy--and that's kind of my summum bonum. There's a brief summary of my take on judicial review in a recent paper of mine on the inconsistency of legitimate democracy and "mob rule." (See especially footnote 23.)

My second (again inconsequential) beef is that The Journal of Value Inquiry only saw fit to mention the (wildly expensive) hardback edition of my text. There are now also the much cheaper paperback and e-book versions! Amazon sells the Kindle version for about $37. Still a lot, but quite a bit less than a C-note.

Anyhow, I'm done kvetching so you can start fetching! {But see my comment below!}