Common good constitutionalism : recovering the classical legal tradition / Adrian Vermeule.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vermeule, Adrian, 1968- author.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Constitutional law--United States--Philosophy.

Constitutional law.

Constitutional law--Philosophy.

United States.

Physical Description:

viii, 241 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 2022.

Summary:

"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.'"-- Back cover.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. The Common Good Defined

2. The Classical Legal Tradition in America

3. Originalism as Illusion

4. Progressive Constitutionalism and Developing Constitutionalism

5. Applications.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9781509548873

1509548874

9781509548866

1509548866

OCLC:

1266642815