In this review essay, I offer a summary of Brian E. Butler’s The Democratic Constitution: Experimentalism and Interpretation. Butler’s democratic experimentalism offers the thesis that democracy needs to be protected democratically rather than by relying on the judicial supremacy over constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court. Butler illustrates what democratic experimentalism looks like through a close reading of key cases showing the virtues of an on-going, open-ended, empirical, fallibilist, and collaborative approach to constitutional interpretation against rival formalist and exclusionary theories. Butler relies on Richard Posner’s iconoclastic empirical approach to adjudication in advancing his thesis. However, Posner is skeptical of the Deweyan democracy Butler deploys to illustrate the democratic constitution.

Further, Posner dismisses the philosophical pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey that Butler uses to ground his theory. Because of Butler’s reliance on Posner’s judicial practice and his side-stepping of Posner’s views on democracy and philosophical pragmatism, I ask how Butler’s proposal stands in relation to the ways it departs from Posner’s theory, if not his practice.

在这篇评论文章中，我提供了布莱恩·E·巴特勒（Brian E. Butler）的《民主宪法：实验主义与解释》的摘要。。巴特勒的民主实验主义提出了这样一个论点，即民主需要民主保护，而不是依靠最高法院对宪法解释的司法至上。巴特勒通过仔细阅读关键案例来说明民主实验主义的模样，这些案例显示了针对敌对形式主义和排他性理论的持续，开放式，实证，谬论和协作式宪法解释的优点。巴特勒在理查德·波斯纳（Richard Posner）的论断中依靠理查德·波斯纳（Richard Posner）的打破常规的经验方法进行裁决。然而，波斯纳对杜威民主主义组织巴特勒为说明民主宪法而部署的组织表示怀疑。

此外，波斯纳还驳斥了巴特勒用来奠定其理论基础的皮尔斯和杜威的哲学实用主义。由于巴特勒对波斯纳司法实践的依赖以及他对波斯纳的民主和哲学实用主义观点的回避，我问巴特勒的提议相对于它偏离波斯纳理论的方式（如果不是他的实践）如何立场。