Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 15 - Constitutional Directives and the Duty to Govern Well

  • from Part VI - Legislatures, Representation, and Duties of Effective Self-Government
  • Edited by Vicki C. Jackson, Harvard Law School, Massachusetts, Yasmin Dawood, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    Constitutionalism and a Right to Effective Government?
    Published online:
    20 October 2022
    Print publication:
    27 October 2022, pp 193-205

  • Summary

    Liberal constitutional discourse has been dominated by a proceduralist, acontextual, universalising worldview. This Rawlsian vision of constitutionalism castigates thick, substantive, moral commitments (other than fundamental rights) in constitutions as illiberal and unwise, at best to be tolerated as minor deviations only when absolutely unavoidable. In practice, however, the ideal of proceduralist constitutionalism is approximated only by a handful of liberal democratic states, arguably the United States and Australia.1 Many other (sufficiently or aspirationally) liberal-democratic states not only include thick moral commitments in their constitutions, tasking their governments with the duty to govern well, but also specify various facets of (what they believe to be required by) good governance.

    Jeff King has characterised such thick moral commitments as constitutional ‘mission statements’.2 An important, but much-ignored, form of these thick commitments is a set of provisions I will call ‘constitutional directives’ or simply ‘directives’.