Constitutional referendums have been criticized for exhibiting the most objectionable features of populism. In this talk, I will contextualize the criticism in debates about the meaning of populism and argue that the criticism can be responded to, through careful institutional design. The talk will conclude by setting out some normative conditions under which constitutional referendums can be considered democratically legitimate. The relevant normative criteria will be supplied by the theory of deliberative constitutionalism.
Professor Hoi Kong is the inaugural holder of The Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, P.C., UBC Professorship in Constitutional Law, which he assumed in 2018. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin’s Program on Constitutional Studies and a Peter Wall Scholar (2020-2021). He researches and teaches in the areas of constitutional, administrative, municipal and comparative law, and constitutional and public law theory.
