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141 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1391 (1992-1993)
Legal Aliens, Local Citizens: The Historical, Constitutional and Theoretical Meanings of Alien Suffrage

handle is hein.journals/pnlr141 and id is 1411 raw text is: LEGAL ALIENS, LOCAL CITIZENS: THE HISTORICAL, CONSTITUTIONAL AND THEORETICAL MEANINGS OF ALIEN SUFFRAGE JAmiN B. RASKINt Citizen: la: an inhabitant of a city or town 2a: a member of a state1 There is no more invariable rule in the history of society: The further electoral rights are extended, the greater is the need for extending them: for after each concession the strength of democracy increases, and its demands increase with its strength.2 INTRODUCTION Democracy promises rule by the people, but the theory of democracy implies no specific set of arrangements for political membership or participation.3 In practice, democracies have always deemed whole categories of people unfit to govern, denying them the vote and thus the opportunity to participate in the * Assistant Professor of Law, Washington College of Law at The American University; A.B. Harvard College 1983;J.D. Harvard Law School 1987. Research for this Article was supported by a grant from the Washington College of Law. I would like to thank Dean Elliott Milstein for his support and the following persons for their comments on this project: Gerald Neuman, Cass Sunstein, Diane OrentlicherJames Boyle, Bernard Corr, Mark Hager, Joan Williams, Linda Bozniak, and Gary Peller. I was also blessed with devoted research assistants, led by Barbara de La Viez, and including Valerie David, Randy Kravis, Carla Markim, and Cate Sutter. This article is dedicated to the late Judith N. Shklar and to the good people of Takoma Park, Maryland. I WEBsTER's THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 411 (1981). 2 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, 2 DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 10 (Henry Reeve trans., & Phillips Bradley ed., Knopf 1946) (1840). 3 Most dictionaries define democracy as government by the people but do not define the people. See, e.g., WEBSTER'S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY 600 (1981). Abraham Lincoln's elegant and resounding formulation in the Gettysburg Address-government of the people, by the people, and for the people-has seized and held the American democratic imagination despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the exact meaning of the people is left unspoken and, therefore, historically dynamic. See GARRY WILLS, LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG: THE WORDS THAT REMADE AMERICA 127-33, 145-47 (1992) (furnishing an exegesis of the address and arguing that it accomplished an intellectual revolution in American political thought by defining the American experiment as the people's commitment to the principles of liberty and equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence rather than a compact among sovereign states). (1391)

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