Our Unsettled Constitution / Melford E. Spiro.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spiro, Melford E., Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Constitutional law--United States.

Constitutional law.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2001]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Ours is an age of growing doubt about constitutional theory and of outright hostility to any theory that defends judicial review. Why should a tiny number of unelected judges be able to validate or invalidate laws on such politically controversial issues as abortion, religion, gender, and sex-or even determine how the president is elected? In this provocative book, a leading constitutional theorist offers an entirely original defense of judicial review. Louis Michael Seidman argues that judicial review is defensible if we set aside common but erroneous assumptions-that constitutional law should be independent from our political commitments and that the role of constitutional law is to settle political disagreement.Seidman develops a theory of "unsettlement." A constitution that unsettles, that destabilizes outcomes produced by the political process, creates no permanent losers nursing deep-seated grievances, he says. An "unsettling" constitution helps to build a community founded on consent by enticing losers into a continuing conversation. The author applies this theory to an array of well-known cases heard by the Supreme Court over the past several decades, including the fall 2000 election decision.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A New Theory of Constitutional Law

1. The Impossible Constitution

2. Strategies for a Just Peace

3. Constitutional Boundaries

4. The Elusive Goal of Unsettlement

5. The Constitution of Political Community

6. The Structure of Unsettlement

7. The Right to Unsettlement

Conclusion: Unsettling Unsettlement

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780300147858

0300147856

OCLC:

1024015603