About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

36 Harv. Int'l. L. J. 1 (1995)
Intolerant Democracies

handle is hein.journals/hilj36 and id is 9 raw text is: VOLUME 36, NUMBER 1, WnNTER 1995 Intolerant Democracies Gregory H. Fox* Georg Nolte** If there be any among us who wish to dissolve this union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monu- ments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. Thomas Jefferson1 This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed. Joseph Goebbels2 ABSTRACT International law is increasingly concerned with national transitions to democratic government. The holding of free and fair elections alone, however, provides no guarantee that a democratic system will become firmly established and capable of resisting challenges by anti-demo- cratic actors. The question thus arises of how intolerant a democracy may become toward such actors in order to preserve itself without relinquishing the claim of being democratic. This problem has arisen on a number of occasions, perhaps the most dramatically upon the cancellation of the second round of the Algerian elections in early 1992. This Article explores the legal issues raised by the presence of anti-democratic actors in an otherwise generally .'free and fair electoral process. The Article first examines two models of democratic govern- ment-the procedural and the substantive-which take opposite per- * Adjunct Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. ** Dr. iur., Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany. We would like to thank Thomas Franck, Jochen Abr. Frowein, Larry Garber, Marthias Herde- gen, Steven Ratner, David Richards, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Helmut Steinberger, Paul Szasz, and Rudiger Wolfrum for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this Article. 1. Thomas Jefferson, First Draft of the Inaugural Address (Mar. 4, 1801), in 8 THE WRITINGS OF THOmAS JEFFERSON 1, 3 (Paul Leicester Ford ed., 1897). 2. Das wird immer einer der besten Witze der Demokratie bleiben, dass sie ihren Todfeinden die Mittel selber stellte, dutch die sie vernichret wurde, quoted in NATIONALsOzIALIsTISCHE DIKTATUR 16 (Karl Dietrich Bracher et al. eds., 1983).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most