SOURCE: "Democracy Isn't What You Think," in The New York Times Book Review, August 18, 1996, p. 18.

Below, Sunstein reviews the question of political legitimacy addressed in Between Facts and Norms, especially Habermas's concept of "deliberative democracy."

Most people know that the Constitution's First Amendment provides the rights to freedom of speech and to the free exercise of religion. But in the first Congress some people seriously proposed that the First Amendment should contain another right: the right on the part of constituents "to instruct" their representatives how to vote. The first Congress ultimately rejected the proposal. Roger Sherman made the central argument against it. In Sherman's view, representatives had a "duty to meet others from the different parts of the Union, and consult…. If they were to be guided by instructions, there would be no use in deliberation." A right to instruct "would destroy the object of the meeting...