James Fishkin

This article poses the problem of public consultation on contested policies involving new technologies and competing values or value‐laden goals. It argues that Deliberative Polling, an approach developed by the author, can be usefully employed to engage representative samples to deliberate in depth in controlled experiments so as to yield a picture of the public's considered judgments. It also argues from recent experience that such consultations can be cost effectively conducted online with stratified random samples. It draws on examples from various issue domains including climate and energy as well as prototype deliberations conducted on gene editing in the wild. It sets out criteria that Deliberative Polling, as well as other designs, should satisfy if policy recommendations based on the data generated by these public consultations are to be credible.

A randomly selected microcosm of the people can usefully play an official role in the lawmaking process. However, there are serious issues to be confronted if such a random sample were to take on the role of a full-scale, full-time second chamber. Some skeptical considerations are detailed. There are also advantages to short convenings of such a sample to take on some of the roles of a second chamber. This article provides a response to the skeptical considerations. Precedents from ancient Athens show how such short-term convenings of a deliberating microcosm can be positioned before, during, or after other elements of the lawmaking process. The article draws on experience from Deliberative Polling to show how this is both practical and productive for the lawmaking process.

Three common assumptions of both liberal theory and political debate are the autonomy of the family, the principle of merit, and equality of life chances. Fishkin argues that even under the best conditions, commitment to any two of these principles precludes the third._“A brief survey and brilliant critique of contemporary liberal political theory…. A must for all political theory or public policy collections.” –_Choice_ “The strong points of Fishkin’s book are many. He raises provocative issues, locates them within a broader theoretical framework, and demonstrates an urgent need for liberals to set certain priorities. His main message—that liberalism has radical implications for ordinary life—needs to be heard by many.” --Virginia L. Warren, _Michigan Law Review_ “A highly original and powerfully argued book…. Fishkin is undoubtedly right, and his warning needs to be taken seriously…. This is not a book that catechizes us about what we should believe concerning the practicalities of distributive justice. It is a book that advises us about how we need to think about beliefs that are already popular dogmas, in the interest of making sense.” –James Gaffney, _America_ James S. Fishkin_ is associate professor of political science at Yale University. He is also the author of _The Limits of Obligation_ and _Beyond Subjective Morality_.

This paper examines the potential role of deliberative democracy in constitutional processes of higher law-making, either for the founding of constitutions or for constitutional change. It defines deliberative democracy as the combination of political equality and deliberation and situates this form of democracy in contrast to a range of alternatives. It then considers two contrasting processes—elite deliberation and plebiscitary mass democracy (embodied in referenda) as approaches to higher law-making that employ deliberation without political equality or political equality without deliberation. It finally turns to some institutional designs that might achieve both fundamental values at the same time, or in the process of realizing a sequence of choices.

Rather than respond to Gibbard, point by point, I will comment on what I take to be the general spirit of his argument. The old consensus on some form or another of utilitarianism, a consensus that dominated discussions in moral and political theory only a few years ago, has now largely evaporated before the heat of distributional objections founded on justice, the “separateness of persons,” and other concerns for the severe sacrifices that utilitarianism might require of some for the sake of greater gains to others