Welfare and the Constitution / Sotirios A. Barber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barber, Sotirios A.

Series:

New Forum Books

New Forum Books ; 49

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Constitutional law--United States--Philosophy.

Constitutional law.

Welfare state--United States--Philosophy.

Welfare state.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (183 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ ; Woodstock : Princeton University Press, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Welfare and the Constitution defends a largely forgotten understanding of the U.S. Constitution: the positive or "welfarist" view of Abraham Lincoln and the Federalist Papers. Sotirios Barber challenges conventional scholarship by arguing that the government has a constitutional duty to pursue the well-being of all the people. He shows that James Madison was right in saying that the "real welfare" of the people must be the "supreme object" of constitutional government. With conceptual rigor set in fluid prose, Barber opposes the shared view of America's Right and Left: that the federal constitutional duties of public officials are limited to respecting negative liberties and maintaining processes of democratic choice. Barber contends that no historical, scientific, moral, or metaethical argument can favor today's negative constitutionalism over Madison's positive understanding. He urges scholars to develop a substantive account of constitutional ends for use in critiquing Supreme Court decisions, the policies of elected officials, and the attitudes of the larger public. He defends the philosophical possibility of such theories while also offering a theory of his own as a starting point for the discussion the book will provoke. This theory holds, for example, that voucher schemes which drain resources from secular public schools to schools that would train citizens to submit to religious authority are unconstitutional; First Amendment issues aside, such schemes defeat what is undeniably an element of the "real welfare" of the people, individually and collectively: the capacity to think critically for oneself.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Chapter One. Introduction: Every State a Welfare State

Chapter Two. Charter of Negative Liberties: Arguments from Text and History

Chapter Three. Negative Constitutionalism and Unwanted Consequences

Chapter Four. Moral Philosophy and the Negative-Liberties Model

Chapter Five. The Instrumental Constitution

Chapter Six. Is the Constitution Adequate to Its Ends?

Index

Notes:

Originally published: 2003.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612129414

9781282129412

1282129414

9781400825837

1400825830

OCLC:

367674507