JUDIPOP pursues to provide a new perspective on the interaction between populism, constitutionalism and liberal democratic theory. It is intended to analyze how populism uses/abuses constitutionalism in its attempt to delegitimize liberal democracies. JUDIPOP's hypothesis is that constitutionalism is a malleable instrument that populism uses/abuses to seize power and, along these lines, wear down liberal democracy. In this confrontation, one of the main institutional structures of constitutionalism today, the judiciary, also appears as the main protagonist. JUDIPOP, therefore, wants to focus, as an example in the populism and constitutionalism dialectic, on the role of the judiciary (ordinary and constitutional jurisdiction) and how it is conceived, used/abuse, by populism.

This conflict will be addressed from two different perspectives: the theoretical and the practical. The first concerns the level of language, discourse or legal thought underlying populism and, therefore, its conception of the judiciary. The central critique of populism -the people must really exercise the power and not the elites- is not only an attack on the imaginary of liberal democratic theory -in which power must, as a principle, be exercised by the people- but also on the own constitutionalism that cannot be legitimized today without the accompaniment of real popular sovereignty (which the judiciary serves). Constitutionalism has always addressed this type of criticism and has developed various responses in this regard. Different versions have been generated around the debate on the democratic objection to constitutional justice, on the one hand, and the degree of rigidity of constitutions, on the other. Examples of this debate are United States popular constitutionalism or theories in favour or against weak and strong constitutionalism (soft and hard judicial review of legislation) regarding the greater or lesser intensity of the power of the judge to declare unconstitutional the norms emanating from the legislative power. JUDIPOP pursues to analyze how populism contributes in the discursive language that has existed up to now or, on the contrary, whether it is intended to appropriate a language that was already rooted in the legal thought that underlies constitutionalism.

JUDIPOP also pursues to study populism in practice. In our societies, we currently find ourselves with populist movements that struggle to be majorities in some cases and, in others, have reached positions of majority and institutional power. Populism is not merely discourse or language, but also political and institutional action. On this practical level, it is important to study how the institutional structures set up by constitutionalism and, above all, those that were intended to protect the system of constitutional principles and values, have reacted and also to what extent they have fueled the phenomenon. It is here where the role of the judiciary emerges as essential and on which the efforts of this project are focused. We already have a few experiences in our societies in which populism has been relevant for drawing conclusions about how the judiciary has been used and how it has reacted.