The revival of the republican tradition in American jurisprudence: a critical approach

No abstractClassical Republicanism was early on differentiated from democratic theory, emphasizing a citizen’s duties, that is the love of country and the duty of active participation in public life. From ancient Rome until Renaissance Florence and the pre-Revolutionary United States, Republicanism was initially divided into two trends, one liberal and the other communitarian, and was ultimately assimilated into liberalism. Its recent resurgence is in reality an attempt to revive its communitarian aspects. This revival was transplanted somewhat crudely into the area of the law to serve the purposes of a particular school of interpretation of American constitutional law, but also to challenge the sweeping theories of Public Choice and Constitutional Economics. Despite the interesting debate that it sparked, civic Republicanism has failed to present its case as a convincing alternative theoretical worldview, while its political influence has remained rather trivial. Its contribution lies in that it raised issues that were long considered forgotten or outdated and that deserve to be discussed anew