Who’s Your Daddy? Legitimacy,Parody,and Soap Operas in Contemporary Constitutional Discourse

Abstract

In this article, I explore parody as an alternative way to read contemporary constitutional discourse, providing extended examples from the work of noted constitutional theorist Ronald Dworkin and noted jurist Justice Antonin Scalia. Both Dworkin and Scalia have been widely read as seeking to defend the current legal regime in the United States, with particular emphasis placed on maintaining judicial legitimacy. I argue that such a reading of Dworkin and Scalia assumes a stable and widely accepted definition of legitimacy, which Critical Race Theorists and others have long contested. Turning to a contemporary soap opera (One Life to Live) for an example of parody being used to contest legitimacy, I offer an alternative, parodic reading of Dworkin and Scalia which contests rather than defends judicial legitimacy, to the end of fostering a better balance between dissent and consent in contemporary constitutional discourse.