Product Description: This is an ambitious work on constitutional theory. Influenced by the views of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sean Wilson tackles the problem of how a judge can obey a document written in ordinary, flexible language. He argues that whether something is “constitutional” is not an historical fact, but is an artisan judgment...read more

Product Description: What would the Framers of the Constitution make of multinational corporations? Nuclear weapons? Gay marriage? They led a preindustrial country, much of it dependent on slave labor, huddled on the Atlantic seaboard. The Founders saw society as essentially hierarchical, led naturally by landed gentry like themselves...read more

Product Description: The founding of the United States after the American Revolution was so deliberate, so inspired, and so monumental in scope that the key actors considered this new government to be a work of art framed from natural rights. Recognizing the artificial nature of the state, these early politicians believed the culture of a people should inform the development of their governing rules and bodies...read more

Product Description: The Rule of Recognition and the U.S. Constitution is a volume of original essays that discuss the applicability of Hart's rule of recognition model of a legal system to U.S. constitutional law. The contributors are leading scholars in analytical jurisprudence and constitutional theory, including Matthew Adler, Larry Alexander, Mitchell Berman, Michael Dorf, Kent Greenawalt, Richard Fallon, Michael Green, Kenneth Einar Himma, Stephen Perry, Frederick Schauer, Scott Shapiro, Jeremy Waldron, and Wil Waluchow...read more

Product Description: 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...read more

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.

Product Description: The Nature and Scope of Individual Rights provides historical context for the cases, articles and wide range of materials presented throughout the book. Readers explore how theories of social freedom and governance were developed and articulated in national debates on the most controversial matters of law and social science...read more

Product Description: The role courts should play in American democracy has long been contested, fueling debates among citizens who take an active interest in politics. Alexander Bickel made a significant contribution to these debates with his seminal publication, The Least Dangerous Branch, which framed the problem of defending legitimate judicial authority...read more

Product Description: Located at the intersection of law, political science, philosophy, and literary theory, this book explores the nature of American constitutional interpretation through a reconsideration of the long-standing debate between the interpretive theories of originalism and nonoriginalism...read more

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Product Description: The new edition of The American Constitutional Order is designed for a four- to six-semester-hour course on Constitutional Law covering both the structural features of the Constitution as well as individual rights. This book includes ample historical materials, lengthy explanatory notes, both introducing and following cases, and employs exemplar or principal cases rather than merely cumulating redundant examples...read more

Product Description: Book by Franklin, Mitchell

Product Description: This work on the history of constitutional theory suggests that in recent years, new political and interdisciplinary perspectives have undermined the tenets of legal liberalism, and that liberal law professors have enlisted other disciplines in an attempt to legitimize their beliefs...read more

Product Description: The American Constitution is often held up as a model for other countries to imitate. According to Mark Brandon, however, it is a model not just of success, but also of failure. In this book, Brandon examines the breakdown of American constitutional order in the nineteenth century, paying special attention to slavery as an institution and as a subject of political rhetoric...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This volume explores the relationship between religion and politics. It brings a varied sample of richly detailed comparative and case studies together with a set of analytical paradigms in an integrated framework. It is a major statement on a timely subject, and a plea for the acknowledgment of normative pluralism as firmly rooted in the history of religion...read more

Product Description: In this comprehensive collection of essays representing a lifetime of scholarship, distinguished political scientist Richard Stevens examines the fundamental principles of the American Constitutional order. Stevens discusses the Constitution's roots in Renaissance and Enlightenment political philosophy, and evaluates several major twentieth-century constitutional commentators...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: This provocative book is both a rich intellectual history of 200 years of American constitutional theory and a major contribution to that theory. Paul Kahn argues that self-government is impossible within the constraints placed on government by the Constitution, and that constitutional theory-which attempts to reconcile self-government and history-will never achieve its goal...read more

Product Description: Provides a useful, fair-minded and comprehensive guide to the various theories of constitutional interpretation that are contending for the adherence of contemporary jurists.

Product Description: Book by Meyers, Diana T, Kipnis, Kenneth, *, Editors, Griffin, Steve

Product Description: An excellent sampling of current thinking in the theory and practice of constitutionalism. Each essay was written specifically for this volume by well-known legal and political philosophers. . . . All in all, a first-rate and provocative example of contemporary philosophical concerns...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)