Introduction—Public law and populism

Abstract

AbstractIn an age of profound democratic anxiety, significant academic attention has been paid to the crisis in constitutional democracy. Constitutional lawyers, however, are still grappling with the relationship between public law and the current actual and perceived threats facing constitutional democracy in countries worldwide. This Introduction considers how the articles in this special volume address three pressing questions. How should we should define the current threats to democracy, and populist challenge? Second, how might public law be a potential cause or contributing factor? Third, how might public law still provide some answers to the contemporary challenges to constitutional democracy? In Prof Dixon’s view, constitutional democracy is a good worth preserving and there are models of at least relative “success” in the current constitutional universe. But Prof Dixon shares the view of many contributors to the special volume that the challenge is immense, and urgent, and that there are no easy solutions.