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Constitutional theory has been challenged in recent years, by significant figures in the legal field, as essentially pointless. Too much normativity, not enough neutrality; too much conjecture, not enough data; too much politics, not enough truth. How should we constitutional theorists answer this basic challenge to the foundation of our research program? I suggest one possible solution here: we can make the discipline more rigorous by changing the way in which we assess competing claims in constitutional theory. Drawing on important work in epistemology, the philosophy of science, and legal theory, I examine the question of theory assessment and selection. I propose a set of criteria for constitutional theory selection consistent with the most cutting edge work in these fields and explain how we can use these criteria—simplicity, consilience, conservatism, and fruitfulness—and demonstrate how they operate to make theory assessment more sophisticated by applying them to two distinct sets of competing theoretical claims. Along the way, I discuss perennial debates like the controversy between those who claim that adjudication should be conducted with reference to legal reasons only and those who claim that courts may consider extra-legal reasons, including moral reasons, to decide cases. I then turn to examine a much more recent debate about the nature of certain doctrinal structures in constitutional adjudication. I argue, in the end, that more nuanced theory assessment techniques will advance constitutional theory in a manner that simultaneously answers foundational challenges and makes the research program more likely to produce testable, provable claims about the nature of constitutionalism going forward.

Linguistics is a discipline with ever expanding boundaries and interests. Despite the narrow definition of linguistics which dominates academia, sub-fields continue to flourish and ways of doing linguistics continue to expand. As ways to do linguistics increase, and as approaches to linguistics accumulate over time, it becomes increasingly necessary for students of linguistics to have ways of understanding and comparing developments in linguistics. Sociolinguistic Metatheory is a book which explains foundational developments in linguistics by taking the past three decades of developments in so

Metatheory is out of fashion. If theory has a purpose, we are told, that purpose is the generation of practically relevant knowledge. Metatheoretical inquiry and debate contribute little to such knowledge and are best bracketed, left aside for the philosophers. This article challenges this all-too-common line of reasoning. First, one can bracket metatheoretical inquiry, but this does not free one's work, theoretical or otherwise, of metatheoretical assumptions. Second, our metatheoretical assumptions affect the kind of practically relevant knowledge we can produce. If our goal is the generation of such knowledge, understanding how our metatheoretical assumptions enable or constrain this objective is essential. Today, the most sustained articulation of the 'bracket metatheory thesis' is provided by analytical eclecticists, who call on the field to leave behind metatheoretical debate, concentrate on concrete puzzles and problematics, and draw selectively on insights from diverse research traditions to fashion middle-range theoretical explanations. Yet by forgoing metatheoretical reflection, analytical eclecticists fail to see how their project is deeply structured by epistemological and ontological assumptions, making it an exclusively empirical-theoretic project with distinctive ontological content. This metatheoretical framing significantly impedes the kind of practically relevant knowledge eclecticist research can generate. Practical knowledge, as both Aristotle and Kant understood, is knowledge that can address basic questions of political action — how should I, we, or they act? Empirical-theoretic insights alone cannot provide such knowledge; it has to be integrated with normative forms of reasoning. As presently conceived, however, analytical eclecticism cannot accommodate such reasoning. If the generation of practical knowledge is one of the field's ambitions, greater metatheoretical reflection and a more expansive and ambitious form of eclecticism are required.

Cover -- Endorsement -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction -- Paradox: Distinguished -- Paradox: Re-Examined -- A Fresh Approach to Paradox -- Chapter Synopses -- Reader Guidance -- Part I The Pervasiveness of Paradox -- 2 Paradox and Art -- The Visual Arts -- Literature -- Cinema -- Music -- Postlude -- 3 Paradox and Society -- Homo Politicus -- Homo Economicus -- Homo Psychologicus -- Homo Sociologicus -- Postlude -- 4 Paradox and Organization -- Control -- Performance -- Group Dynamics -- Operations -- Postlude -- 5 Paradox and Nature -- Mathematics, Geometry, and Physics -- Chemistry, Biology, and Medicine -- Ecology and Environmental Sustainability -- Science Contra Art, Magic, and Religion -- Postlude -- 6 Paradox and Ontology -- The Definitive Methodological Paradox -- The Active Embrace of Paradox in Ethnographic Research -- Towards an Intersubjective Research Agenda -- Postlude -- Part II The Pedagogical Potential for Paradox -- 7 Pedagogical Logic I: Paradox Thwarts Moral Closure -- Might Makes Right -- Binary Morality -- The Paradox of Free Will -- The Paradox of Selflessness -- The Paradoxes of Conflict -- Postlude -- 8 Pedagogical Logic II: Paradox Elicits Egalitarian Inertia -- The Pleasure and Pain Game -- Pleasure, Relativity, and the Egalitarian Evening Out of Experience -- Towards a Constructive Approach to Pain -- Towards a New Dynamics of Pleasure -- Postlude -- 9 Pedagogical Logic III: Paradox Augments Understanding of Agency -- Agency -- Consciousness -- Paradox and AI -- Postlude -- 10 Conclusion -- Pervasive Paradoxes -- The Pattern of Paradox -- The Horseshoe: Towards a U-Shaped Ontological Pattern -- The Mobius Strip: Towards an Inverted Ontological Pattern -- The Pendulum: Towards a Dynamic Ontological Pattern.

The metatheory on the democratic process poses a conceptual framework for the empirical analysis of democratic processes in liberal democracies. A model of democratic processes is being developed which proceeds from certain metatheoretical presuppositions. It distinguishes, inter alia, between three subsystems of the political system and defines their relevant collective actors. Moreover, a concept of political structures and political performance is being proposed to provide theoretically for an empirical explanation of diverse process phenomena by different structural arrangements in liberal democracies. ; Die Metatheorie des demokratischen Prozesses ist ein begrifflicher Bezugsrahmen zur empirischen Analyse der demokratischen Prozesse in den liberalen Demokratien. Ausgehend von bestimmten metatheoretischen Grundannahmen wird ein Modell des demokratischen Prozesses entwickelt. Dieses enthalt u.a. eine Abgrenzung von drei Subsystemen des politischen Systems und eine Bestimmung der relevanten kollektiven Akteure dieser drei Subsysteme. Zur theoretischen Vorbereitung der empirischen Erklarung unterschiedlicher Prozefiphanomene durch unterschiedliche strukturelle Arrangements liberaler Demokratien wird zudem ein Konzept politischer Strukturen und politischer Performanz vorgeschlagen.