The Legislative Assembly and Representative Deliberation

In The Nature of Legislative Intent, Richard Ekins presents the legislative assembly as “a representative and deliberative body” and claims that “the assembly’s standing in relation to the community supports, rather than frustrates, its capacity to make reasoned choices through deliberation.” After providing an outline of Ekins’s view of the legislative assembly, I address this claim. First (1), I focus on the assembly as a representative body to answer the following question: What kind of representative relation holds between the assembly and the community? Second (2), I consider the assembly as a deliberative body to answer the following question: How does the representative relation between the assembly and the community bear on law-making and, more specifically, on the assembly’s capacity to make reasoned choices through deliberation? On the basis of my answers to these questions, I then (3) set out two challenges that emerge from Ekins’s account of the assembly and (4) conclude.