Abstract

The primacy of judicial review at a global and State level has been challenged in the last decade by several authors. These authors define themselves as political constitutionalists in the Commonwealth and popular constitutionalists in the United States. The central tenet of these streams of thought is the importance of the political dimension in contemporary constitutionalism, a position which entails a rejection or downplaying of constitutional justice. This paper aims at retrieving the most promising aspects of this political approach. In particular, it praises its emphasis on political partecipation. However, it also highlights that by equating the political process with elections it puts forward a reductive conception of politics. Moreover, both proposals do not track properly the political channels opened by the interaction between non-political institutions and citizens.