The Popular Courts in Athenian Democracy
Journal of Politics
23 Pages Posted: 26 May 2020 Last revised: 21 Jun 2022
Date Written: June 9, 2022
Abstract
Law-courts are often portrayed as a check upon legislatures. That interpretative paradigm is visible within the scholarship on classical Athenian democracy, in the claim that certain legal reforms of the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC that enhanced the role of the popular courts in law-making were intended to check hasty decision-making by assembly-goers. This article argues that, on the contrary, those reforms were intended to help secure the political supremacy of the demos (“assembly,” “collective common people”) over the political elite (office-holders and political leaders). The relative poverty and age of judges, random selection, restrictions on speech, the secret ballot, the openly self-regarding quality of demotic justice, and judges’ role in disciplining politicians made the courts an excellent guarantor of popular rule, better in some respects than the assembly. Assembly-goers and judges delivered a “one-two punch” that preserved demokratia by keeping the political elite in its place.
Keywords: Athenian democracy, Athenian courts, judicial review, demos, demokratia
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