Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-16-2008
Abstract
Consider democracy in America through the lens of the presidential debates. It is not a pretty picture. From a high point in the nineteenth century (for example, the lengthy Lincoln-Douglas Senate campaign debates of 1858) a declining trajectory can be traced to the present day, with a marked acceleration in the Age of Television. To our polity's discredit, the presidential debate has long since ceased to be a dialogue that might shed light on the candidates' true powers of deliberation. The key to reversing this long decline, I believe, lies in an unlikely place: in the structural features of the legal trial.
Recommended Citation
Charles W. Collier, Presidential Debates and Deliberative Democracy, 117 Yale L.J. Pocket Part 288 (2008), available at http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/facultypub/616