Political Obligation and The Constitutional Law

Abstract

This paper has two purposes. The first purpose is to make clear the structure of Dworkin’s theory on the political obligation. The second purpose is to grasp some implications of his theory for the theoretical studies of the constitutional law. For Dworkin. the political obligation is founded on the basis of the membership of a genuine political community. To be genuine, a political community have to satisfy the democratic conditions. The democratic conditions consist of the following three principles. 1. The principle guaranteeing of the equal status for the participation to the collective decisions. 2. The principle guaranteeing of the equal concern to the interests of all members when the community makes collective decisions. 3.The principle guaranteeing of the moral independence of the individuals. Dworkin interprets the modern constitutional law as a concretization of the democratic conditions. In other words the practice of the moral readings of the constitutional law works as the continuous concretization of the democratic conditions. On the basis of this understandings I propose the thesis that the appeal to the constitutional fundamental rights by the citizens should he understood as one way of the fulfillment of the political obligation at the genuine political community.