@article{2015:davis:legitimacy,
title = {Legitimacy: The Social Turn and Constitutional Review: What political liberalism suggests: A Reply to Frank I. Michelman},
year = {2015},
note = {The authority enjoyed by a constitution is not self-generating. It
rests on political conditions which cannot be guaranteed by the
constitutional text itself. For this reason contemporary
constitutionally structured government requires a legitimacy which is
not attained through some transcendent metaphysical claim but by means
of the performance of its regulatory functions designed to improve the
life and health of the citizenry. Expressed differently, when the
output of this regulation closes the societal gap between a prevailing
reality and the vision prefigured in the constitutional text, the
constitutional enterprise may only then attain a viable form of
political power. For Martin Loughlin, this role of government
underlies a certain utopian idea, particularly when informed by a
positive form of constitutionalism which holds the potential for an
escape from the limits of nature and history, as it prefigures a new
framework for society. Hence, the key question is whether this type of
governmental regime can continue to maintain the power of
constitutional imagination which sustains a collective political
association that the individual within the association will tend to
accept over the long run.},
journal = {KritV Kritische Vierteljahresschrift für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft},
pages = {224--228},
author = {Davis, Dennis},
volume = {98},
number = {3}
}