Rethinking the broad outline of our democratic pact.

Abstract

We present the main reasons that motivated us to collectively discuss Law as a Conversation between Equals, by Roberto Gargarella: his call to exercise the constitutional imagination, his radically divergent view of the Latin American dogmatic tradition, his anguish, which we share so much, due to the situation of our democracies. Then we present what in our opinion are some of the main thematic axes of the book. As a start to the conversation, we introduce some criticisms that anticipate those of our colleagues. Others are on our own. Here are some: the insufficiency, at least expository, of the ideal of conversation between equals; the lack of roots of its diagnoses and remedies in a political economy appropriate to our times; our dissatisfaction with his reading of the crisis of democracy merely (or mainly) in terms of the crisis of political representation.