Tradition and Morality in Constitutional Law PDF Download

Author: Robert H. Bork
Publisher: American Enterprise Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 32

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Author: Jefferson Powell
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822313144
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Locates the origins of constitutional law in the Enlightenment attempt to control the violence of the state by subjecting power to reason, then shows its evolution into a tradition of rational inquiry embodied in a community of lawyers and judges. Continues with discussion of how the tradition's 19th-century presuppositions about the autonomy and rationality of constitutional argument have been undermined in the 20th century. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author: Michael J. Perry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019536239X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Addressing the proper relation of moral and religious belief to politics and law, especially constitutional law, Perry here discusses whether a common moral foundation exists that is capable of providing, in a diverse social system like ours, consistent guidelines for handling divisive political, policy, religious and constitutional disputes. His study represents a distinctive position in the vast and growing literature on the moral foundations of liberal political and legal life.

Author: Ronald Dworkin
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0198265573
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Dworkin's important book is a collection of essays which discuss almost all of the great constitutional issues of the last two decades, including abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, homosexuality, pornography, and free speech. Dworkin offers a consistently liberal view of the Constitution and argues that fidelity to it and to law demands that judges make moral judgments. He proposes that we all interpret the abstract language of the Constitution by reference to moral principles about political decency and justice. His 'moral reading' therefore brings political morality into the heart of constitutional law. The various chapters of this book were first published separately; now drawn together they provide the reader with a rich, full-length treatment of Dworkin's general theory of law.

Author: Ellis Washington
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Arguing that the political and legal philosophy he advocates is the same as the one applied by the constitutional framers, Washington (business law and contracts, Davenport U.) argues that the "tempting sophistry" of separating law from morality" is at the root of the numerous problems in American institutions. He present 12 essays, some of which have been previously published, in which he decries the impact of such philosophical approaches to the law as utilitarianism, relativism, egalitarianism, secularism, feminism, progressivism, and pragmatism on the U.S.'s legal framework. His criticism of the effects of these philosophies is coupled with application of his natural law philosophy to such areas as juvenile delinquency, racism, international law, and pornography. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author: Alexander M. Bickel
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300021196
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Contrasts liberal views in the tradition of John Locke with conservative Whig attitudes as personified by Edmund Burke in a consideration of moral duty and civil disobedience

Author: Graham Walker
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400861446
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Graham Walker boldly recasts the debate over issues like constitutional interpretation and judicial review, and challenges contemporary thinking not only about specifically constitutional questions but also about liberalism, law, justice, and rights. Walker targets the "skeptical" moral nihilism of leading American judges and writers, on both the political left and right, charging that their premises undermine the authority of the Constitution, empty its moral words of any determinate meaning, and make nonsense of ostensibly normative theories. But he is even more worried about those who desire to conduct constitutional government by direct recourse to an authoritative moral truth. Augustine's political ethics, Walker argues, offers a solution--a way to embrace substantive goodness while relativizing its embodiment in politics and law. Walker sees in Augustinian theory an understanding of the rule of law that prevents us from mistaking law for moral truth. Pointing out how the tensions in that theory resonate with the normative ambivalence of America's liberal constitutionalism, he shows that Augustine can provide successful but decidedly nonliberal grounds for the artifices and compromises characteristic of law in a liberal state. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author: Bruce P. Frohnen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674968921
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Americans are ruled by an unwritten constitution consisting of executive orders, signing statements, and other quasi-laws designed to reform society, Bruce Frohnen and George Carey argue. Consequently, the Constitution no longer means what it says to the people it is supposed to govern and the government no longer acts according to the rule of law.

Author: Adrian Vermeule
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509548882
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
The way that Americans understand their Constitution and wider legal tradition has been dominated in recent decades by two exhausted approaches: the originalism of conservatives and the “living constitutionalism” of progressives. Is it time to look for an alternative? Adrian Vermeule argues that the alternative has been there, buried in the American legal tradition, all along. He shows that US law was, from the founding, subsumed within the broad framework of the classical legal tradition, which conceives law as “a reasoned ordering to the common good.” In this view, law’s purpose is to promote the goods a flourishing political community requires: justice, peace, prosperity, and morality. He shows how this legacy has been lost, despite still being implicit within American public law, and convincingly argues for its recovery in the form of “common good constitutionalism.” This erudite and brilliantly original book is a vital intervention in America’s most significant contemporary legal debate while also being an enduring account of the true nature of law that will resonate for decades with scholars and students.

Author: Stephen E. Gottlieb
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814731284
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
We like to think of judges and justices as making decisions based on the facts and the law. But to what extent do jurists decide cases in accordance with their own preexisting philosophy of law, and what specific ideological assumptions account for their decisions? Stephen E. Gottlieb adopts a unique perspective on the decision-making of Supreme Court justices, blending and re-characterizing traditional accounts of political philosophy in a way that plausibly explains many of the justices' voting patterns. A seminal study of the Rehnquist Court, Morality Imposed illustrates how, in contrast to previous courts which took their mandate to be a move toward a freer and/or happier society, the current court evidences little concern for this goal, focusing instead on thinly veiled moral judgments. Delineating a fault line between liberal and conservative justices on the Rehnquist Court, Gottlieb suggests that conservative justices have rejected the basic principles that informed post-New Deal individual rights jurisprudence and have substituted their own conceptions of moral character for these fundamental principles. Morality Imposed adds substantially to our understanding of the Supreme Court, its most recent cases, and the evolution of judicial philosophy in the U.S.