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Our Living Constitution
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Book Synopsis The Living Constitution by : David A. Strauss
Download or read book The Living Constitution written by David A. Strauss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once remarked that the theory of an evolving, "living" Constitution effectively "rendered the Constitution useless." He wanted a "dead Constitution," he joked, arguing it must be interpreted as the framers originally understood it. In The Living Constitution, leading constitutional scholar David Strauss forcefully argues against the claims of Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, and other "originalists," explaining in clear, jargon-free English how the Constitution can sensibly evolve, without falling into the anything-goes flexibility caricatured by opponents. The living Constitution is not an out-of-touch liberal theory, Strauss further shows, but a mainstream tradition of American jurisprudence--a common-law approach to the Constitution, rooted in the written document but also based on precedent. Each generation has contributed precedents that guide and confine judicial rulings, yet allow us to meet the demands of today, not force us to follow the commands of the long-dead Founders. Strauss explores how judicial decisions adapted the Constitution's text (and contradicted original intent) to produce some of our most profound accomplishments: the end of racial segregation, the expansion of women's rights, and the freedom of speech. By contrast, originalism suffers from fatal flaws: the impossibility of truly divining original intent, the difficulty of adapting eighteenth-century understandings to the modern world, and the pointlessness of chaining ourselves to decisions made centuries ago. David Strauss is one of our leading authorities on Constitutional law--one with practical knowledge as well, having served as Assistant Solicitor General of the United States and argued eighteen cases before the United States Supreme Court. Now he offers a profound new understanding of how the Constitution can remain vital to life in the twenty-first century.
Book Synopsis Our Living Constitution by : Jerry Aten
Download or read book Our Living Constitution written by Jerry Aten and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed to teach the Constitution of the United States to students in an easier and more meaningful language than it is written.
Book Synopsis The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution by : John W. Compton
Download or read book The Evangelical Origins of the Living Constitution written by John W. Compton and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Deal is often said to represent a sea change in American constitutional history, overturning a century of precedent to permit an expanded federal government, increased regulation of the economy, and eroded property protections. John Compton offers a surprising revision of this familiar narrative, showing that nineteenth-century evangelical Protestants, not New Deal reformers, paved the way for the most important constitutional developments of the twentieth century. Following the great religious revivals of the early 1800s, American evangelicals embarked on a crusade to eradicate immorality from national life by destroying the property that made it possible. Their cause represented a direct challenge to founding-era legal protections of sinful practices such as slavery, lottery gambling, and buying and selling liquor. Although evangelicals urged the judiciary to bend the rules of constitutional adjudication on behalf of moral reform, antebellum judges usually resisted their overtures. But after the Civil War, American jurists increasingly acquiesced in the destruction of property on moral grounds. In the early twentieth century, Oliver Wendell Holmes and other critics of laissez-faire constitutionalism used the judiciary’s acceptance of evangelical moral values to demonstrate that conceptions of property rights and federalism were fluid, socially constructed, and subject to modification by democratic majorities. The result was a progressive constitutional regime—rooted in evangelical Protestantism—that would hold sway for the rest of the twentieth century.
Book Synopsis The Living Constitution by : Howard Lee McBain
Download or read book The Living Constitution written by Howard Lee McBain and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Living Constitution, Dying Faith by : Bradley C. S. Watson
Download or read book Living Constitution, Dying Faith written by Bradley C. S. Watson and published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This book was released on 2009 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Living Constitution, Dying Faith, political scientist and legal historian Bradley Watson examines how the contemporary embrace of the "living" Constitution has arisen from the radical transformation of American political thought. This transformation, brought about in the late nineteenth century by the philosophies of social Darwinism and pragmatism, explains how and why contemporary jurisprudence is so alien to the constitutionalism of the American Founders. To understand why today's courts rule the way they do, one must start with the ideas exposed by and explained in Watson's timely tome. Today's view--rooted in progressivism--is not simply that we have an interpretable Constitution, but that we have a Constitution which must be interpreted in light of "historically situated," continually evolving notions of the individual, the state, and society. This modern historical approach has been embraced by the judicial appointees of both Democratic and Republican presidents, by both liberals and conservatives, for a century or more. Living Constitution, Dying Faith shows how such an approach has directly undermined Americans' faith in a limited Constitution--as well as their faith in the eternal verities.
Book Synopsis America's Unwritten Constitution by : Akhil Reed Amar
Download or read book America's Unwritten Constitution written by Akhil Reed Amar and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading between the lines: America's implicit Constitution -- Heeding the deed: America's enacted Constitution -- Hearing the people: America's lived Constitution -- Confronting modern case law: America's "warrented" Constitution -- Putting precedent in its place: America's doctrinal Constitution -- Honoring the icons: America's symbolic Constitution -- "Remembering the ladies" : America's feminist Constitution -- Following Washington's lead: America's "Georgian" Constitution -- Interpreting government practices: America's institutional Constitution -- Joining the party: America's partisan Constitution -- Doing the right thing: America's conscientious Constitution -- Envisioning the future: America's unfinished Constitution -- Afterward -- Appendix: America's written Constitution.
Book Synopsis The Living Presidency by : Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash
Download or read book The Living Presidency written by Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A constitutional originalist sounds the alarm over the presidency’s ever-expanding powers, ascribing them unexpectedly to the liberal embrace of a living Constitution. Liberal scholars and politicians routinely denounce the imperial presidency—a self-aggrandizing executive that has progressively sidelined Congress. Yet the same people invariably extol the virtues of a living Constitution, whose meaning adapts with the times. Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash argues that these stances are fundamentally incompatible. A constitution prone to informal amendment systematically favors the executive and ensures that there are no enduring constraints on executive power. In this careful study, Prakash contends that an originalist interpretation of the Constitution can rein in the “living presidency” legitimated by the living Constitution. No one who reads the Constitution would conclude that presidents may declare war, legislate by fiat, and make treaties without the Senate. Yet presidents do all these things. They get away with it, Prakash argues, because Congress, the courts, and the public routinely excuse these violations. With the passage of time, these transgressions are treated as informal constitutional amendments. The result is an executive increasingly liberated from the Constitution. The solution is originalism. Though often associated with conservative goals, originalism in Prakash’s argument should appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike, as almost all Americans decry the presidency’s stunning expansion. The Living Presidency proposes a baker’s dozen of reforms, all of which could be enacted if only Congress asserted its lawful authority.
Book Synopsis On Reading the Constitution by : Laurence H. TRIBE
Download or read book On Reading the Constitution written by Laurence H. TRIBE and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Constitution speaks in general terms of liberty and property, of the privileges and immunities of citizens, and of the equal protection of the laws--open-ended phrases that seem to invite readers to reflect in them their own visions and agendas. Yet, recognizing that the Constitution cannot be merely what its interpreters wish it to be, this volume's authors draw on literary and mathematical analogies to explore how the fundamental charter of American government should be construed today.
Book Synopsis Living Originalism by : Jack M. Balkin
Download or read book Living Originalism written by Jack M. Balkin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originalism and living constitutionalism, so often understood to be diametrically opposing views of our nation’s founding document, are not in conflict—they are compatible. So argues Jack Balkin, one of the leading constitutional scholars of our time, in this long-awaited book. Step by step, Balkin gracefully outlines a constitutional theory that demonstrates why modern conceptions of civil rights and civil liberties, and the modern state’s protection of national security, health, safety, and the environment, are fully consistent with the Constitution’s original meaning. And he shows how both liberals and conservatives, working through political parties and social movements, play important roles in the ongoing project of constitutional construction. By making firm rules but also deliberately incorporating flexible standards and abstract principles, the Constitution’s authors constructed a framework for politics on which later generations could build. Americans have taken up this task, producing institutions and doctrines that flesh out the Constitution’s text and principles. Balkin’s analysis offers a way past the angry polemics of our era, a deepened understanding of the Constitution that is at once originalist and living constitutionalist, and a vision that allows all Americans to reclaim the Constitution as their own.
Book Synopsis A Constitution for the Living by : Beau Breslin
Download or read book A Constitution for the Living written by Beau Breslin and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-20 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What would America's Constitutions have looked like if each generation wrote its own? "The earth belongs...to the living, the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." These famous words, written by Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, reflect Jefferson's lifelong belief that each generation ought to write its own Constitution. According to Jefferson each generation should take an active role in endorsing, renouncing, or changing the nation's fundamental law. Perhaps if he were alive today to witness our seething debates over constitutional interpretation, he would feel vindicated in this belief. Madison's response was that a Constitution must endure over many generations to gain the credibility needed to keep a nation strong and united. History tells us that Jefferson lost that debate. But what if he had prevailed? In A Constitution for the Living, Beau Breslin reimagines American history to answer that question. By tracing the story from the 1787 Constitutional Convention up to the present, Breslin presents an engaging and insightful narrative account of historical figures and how they might have shaped their particular generation's Constitution. For all those who want to be in the candlelit taverns where the Founders sat debating fundamental issues over wine; to witness towering figures of American history, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington, play out hypothetical meetings and conversations that are startling and revealing; and to attend a Constitutional Convention taking place in the present day--this book brings these possibilities to life with sensitivity, verve, and compelling historical detail. This book is, above all, a call for a more engaged American public at a time when change seems close at hand, if we dare to imagine it.
Book Synopsis The Living Constitution by : David A. Strauss
Download or read book The Living Constitution written by David A. Strauss and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-19 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once remarked that the theory of an evolving, "living" Constitution effectively "rendered the Constitution useless." He wanted a "dead Constitution," he joked, arguing it must be interpreted as the framers originally understood it. In The Living Constitution, leading constitutional scholar David Strauss forcefully argues against the claims of Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, and other "originalists," explaining in clear, jargon-free English how the Constitution can sensibly evolve, without falling into the anything-goes flexibility caricatured by opponents. The living Constitution is not an out-of-touch liberal theory, Strauss further shows, but a mainstream tradition of American jurisprudence--a common-law approach to the Constitution, rooted in the written document but also based on precedent. Each generation has contributed precedents that guide and confine judicial rulings, yet allow us to meet the demands of today, not force us to follow the commands of the long-dead Founders. Strauss explores how judicial decisions adapted the Constitution's text (and contradicted original intent) to produce some of our most profound accomplishments: the end of racial segregation, the expansion of women's rights, and the freedom of speech. By contrast, originalism suffers from fatal flaws: the impossibility of truly divining original intent, the difficulty of adapting eighteenth-century understandings to the modern world, and the pointlessness of chaining ourselves to decisions made centuries ago. David Strauss is one of our leading authorities on Constitutional law--one with practical knowledge as well, having served as Assistant Solicitor General of the United States and argued eighteen cases before the United States Supreme Court. Now he offers a profound new understanding of how the Constitution can remain vital to life in the twenty-first century.
Book Synopsis The Living U.S. Constitution by : Saul K. Padover
Download or read book The Living U.S. Constitution written by Saul K. Padover and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1995-05-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This invaluable book updated the study of constitutional law with the addition of twenty contemporary Supreme Court cases dealing with such controversial topics as the legislative veto, stop-and-frisk, “set asides” to benefit minorities, and hate speech. Beginning with the story of the forming of the Constitution, it includes illuminating character sketches of the delegates written by their contemporaries, as well as the complete text of the Constitution itself. The Supreme Court decisions that the author cites were selected for their variety and complexity, and because they shed light on the problems that arise under the rule of the Constitution and the interpretations of that rule. This third edition was prepared by Jacob W. Landynski, an expert on constitutional law and a longtime colleague at the New School for Social Research of the original author, the outstanding historian and political scientist Saul K. Padover. Besides adding twenty additional cases, Professor Landynski re-edited the existing cases and rewrote the case introductions throughout in order to make the book as informative and concise as possible. The result is a unique and important contribution toward understanding the document upon which our nation is founded.
Book Synopsis The Living Constitution by : Denny Schillings
Download or read book The Living Constitution written by Denny Schillings and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Crisis of the Two Constitutions by : Charles R. Kesler
Download or read book Crisis of the Two Constitutions written by Charles R. Kesler and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American politics grows embittered because it is increasingly torn between two rival constitutions, two opposed cultures, two contrary ways of life. American conservatives rally around the founders’ Constitution, as amended and as grounded in the natural and divine rights and duties of the Declaration of Independence. American liberals herald their “living Constitution,” a term that implies that the original is dead or superseded, and that the fundamental political imperative is constant change or transformation (as President Obama called it) toward a more and more perfect social democracy ruled by a Woke elite. Crisis of the Two Constitutions details how we got to and what is at stake in our increasingly divided America. It takes controversial stands on matters political and scholarly, describing the political genius of America’s founders and their efforts to shape future generations through a constitutional culture that included immigration, citizenship, and educational policies. Then it turns to the attempted progressive refounding of America, tracing its accelerating radicalism from the New Deal to the 1960s’ New Left to today’s unhappy campus nihilists. Finally, the volume appraises American conservatives’ efforts, so far unavailing despite many famous victories, to revive the founders’ Constitution and moral common sense. From Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, what have conservatives learned and where should they go from here? Along the way, Charles R. Kesler argues with critics on the left and right, and refutes fashionable doctrines including relativism, multiculturalism, critical race theory, and radical traditionalism, providing in effect a one-volume guide to the increasingly influential Claremont school of conservative thought by one of its most engaged, and engaging, thinkers.
Book Synopsis The Words We Live By by : Linda R. Monk
Download or read book The Words We Live By written by Linda R. Monk and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Words We Live By takes an entertaining and informative look at America's most important historical document, now with discussions on new rulings on hot button issues such as immigration, gay marriage, gun control, and affirmative action. In The Words We Live By, Linda Monk probes the idea that the Constitution may seem to offer cut-and-dried answers to questions regarding personal rights, but the interpretations of this hallowed document are nearly infinite. For example, in the debate over gun control, does "the right of the people to bear arms" as stated in the Second Amendment pertain to individual citizens or regulated militias? What do scholars say? Should the Internet be regulated and censored, or does this impinge on the freedom of speech as defined in the First Amendment? These and other issues vary depending on the interpretation of the Constitution. Through entertaining and informative annotations, The Words We Live By offers a new way of looking at the Constitution. Its pages reflect a critical, respectful and appreciative look at one of history's greatest documents. The Words We Live By is filled with a rich and engaging historical perspective along with enough surprises and fascinating facts and illustrations to prove that your Constitution is a living -- and entertaining -- document. Updated now for the first time, The Words We Live By continues to take an entertaining and informative look at America's most important historical document, now with discussions on new rulings on hot button issues such as immigration, gay marriage, and affirmative action.
Book Synopsis Constitutional Originalism by : Robert W. Bennett
Download or read book Constitutional Originalism written by Robert W. Bennett and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problems of constitutional interpretation have many faces, but much of the contemporary discussion has focused on what has come to be called "originalism." The core of originalism is the belief that fidelity to the original understanding of the Constitution should constrain contemporary judges. As originalist thinking has evolved, it has become clear that there is a family of originalist theories, some emphasizing the intent of the framers, while others focus on the original public meaning of the constitutional text. This idea has enjoyed a modern resurgence, in good part in reaction to the assumption of more sweeping power by the judiciary, operating in the name of constitutional interpretation. Those arguing for a "living Constitution" that keeps up with a changing world and changing values have resisted originalism. This difference in legal philosophy and jurisprudence has, since the 1970s, spilled over into party politics and the partisan wrangling over court appointments from appellate courts to the Supreme Court. In Constitutional Originalism, Robert W. Bennett and Lawrence B. Solum elucidate the two sides of this debate and mediate between them in order to separate differences that are real from those that are only apparent. In a thorough exploration of the range of contemporary views on originalism, the authors articulate and defend sharply contrasting positions. Solum brings learning from the philosophy of language to his argument in favor of originalism, and Bennett highlights interpretational problems in the dispute-resolution context, describing instances in which a living Constitution is a more feasible and productive position. The book explores those contrasting positions, to be sure, but also uncovers important points of agreement for the interpretational enterprise. This provocative and absorbing book ends with a bibliographic essay that points to landmark works in the field and helps lay readers and students orient themselves within the literature of the debate.
Book Synopsis The Conscience of the Constitution by : Timothy Sandefur
Download or read book The Conscience of the Constitution written by Timothy Sandefur and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty documents a forgotten truth: the word “democracy” is nowhere to be found in either the Constitution or the Declaration. But it is the overemphasis of democracy by the legal community–rather than the primacy of liberty, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence–that has led to the growth of government power at the expense of individual rights. Now, more than ever, Sandefur explains, the Declaration of Independence should set the framework for interpreting our fundamental law. In the very first sentence of the Constitution, the founding fathers stated unambiguously that “liberty” is a blessing. Today, more and more Americans are realizing that their individual freedoms are being threatened by the ever-expanding scope of the government. Americans have always differed over important political issues, but some things should not be settled by majority vote. In The Conscience of the Constitution, Timothy Sandefur presents a dramatic new challenge to the status quo of constitutional law.
