Populism, Cosmopolitanism, or Democratic Realism?

Law and Economics: Realism or Democracy?Is law and economics antiâ•’democratic?

From Democratic Dualism to Political Realism: Transforming the Constitution

In the latest volume of Bruce Ackerman’s We the People, he sets out to demonstrate that the Constitution has been legitimately amended by “unconventional” means, or by mechanisms other than the Article V amendment process. In making this argument, Ackerman offers a rich constitutional history of the Founding period, the Reconstruction era, and the New Deal. He successfully demonstrates that unc...

Political Cosmopolitanism

Cohen G (2008) Rescuing justice and equality. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Freeman S (2006) The law of peoples, social cooperation, human rights, and distributive justice. Soc Philos Pol 23(1):29–68 Freeman S (2007) Rawls. Routledge, New York Kant I (1785) Groundwork of themetaphysics ofmorals (trans: GregorM). Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997 Kant I (1797) The metaphysics of m...

Structural Realism or Modal Empiricism?

Structural realism has been suggested as the best compromise in the debate on scientific realism. It proposes that we should be realist about the relational structure of the world, not its nature. However it faces an important objection, first raised by Newman against Russell: if relations are not qualified, then the position is either trivial or collapses into empiricism, but if relations are ...

Ontological realism: Methodology or misdirection?

In a series of papers over a period of several years Barry Smith and Werner Ceusters have offered a number of cogent criticisms of historical approaches to creating, maintaining, and applying biomedical terminologies and ontologies. And they have urged the adoption of what they refer to as a “realism-based” approach. Indeed, at times they insist that the realism-based approach not only offers c...