Democracy, the Courts, and the Liberal State: A Comparative Analysis of American and German Constitutionalism

Reformulating a problem both of constitutionalism and of liberalism often discussed in the works of Alexis de Tocqueville, Hannah Arendt, and Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Miles argues that constitutionalism cannot be seen merely as a mechanism to limit government, as it also has a crucial civic dimension which the liberal state depends on.