Constructing Basic Liberties

Constructing Basic Liberties PDF

Author: James E. Fleming

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-08-30

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0226821412

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A strong and lively defense of substantive due process. From reproductive rights to marriage for same-sex couples, many of our basic liberties owe their protection to landmark Supreme Court decisions that have hinged on the doctrine of substantive due process. This doctrine is controversial—a battleground for opposing views around the relationship between law and morality in circumstances of moral pluralism—and is deeply vulnerable today. Against recurring charges that the practice of substantive due process is dangerously indeterminate and irredeemably undemocratic, Constructing Basic Liberties reveals the underlying coherence and structure of substantive due process and defends it as integral to our constitutional democracy. Reviewing the development of the doctrine over the last half-century, James E. Fleming rebuts popular arguments against substantive due process and shows that the Supreme Court has constructed basic liberties through common law constitutional interpretation: reasoning by analogy from one case to the next and making complex normative judgments about what basic liberties are significant for personal self-government. Elaborating key distinctions and tools for interpretation, Fleming makes a powerful case that substantive due process is a worthy practice that is based on the best understanding of our constitutional commitments to protecting ordered liberty and securing the status and benefits of equal citizenship for all.

Making Men Moral

Making Men Moral PDF

Author: Robert P. George

Publisher: Clarendon Press

Published: 1993-08-19

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0191018732

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Contemporary liberal thinkers commonly suppose that there is something in principle unjust about the legal prohibition of putatively victimless immoralities. Against the prevailing liberal view, Robert P. George defends the proposition that `moral laws' can play a legitimate, if subsidiary, role in preserving the `moral ecology' of the cultural environment in which people make the morally significant choices by which they form their characters and influence, for good or ill, the moral lives of others. George shows that a defence of morals legislation is fully compatible with a `pluralistic perfectionist' political theory of civil liberties and public morality.

Free Expression and Democracy in America

Free Expression and Democracy in America PDF

Author: Stephen M. Feldman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-05-15

Total Pages: 596

ISBN-13: 0226240746

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From the 1798 Sedition Act to the war on terror, numerous presidents, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and local officials have endorsed the silencing of free expression. If the connection between democracy and the freedom of speech is such a vital one, why would so many governmental leaders seek to quiet their citizens? Free Expression and Democracy in America traces two rival traditions in American culture—suppression of speech and dissent as a form of speech—to provide an unparalleled overview of the law, history, and politics of individual rights in the United States. Charting the course of free expression alongside the nation’s political evolution, from the birth of the Constitution to the quagmire of the Vietnam War, Stephen M. Feldman argues that our level of freedom is determined not only by the Supreme Court, but also by cultural, social, and economic forces. Along the way, he pinpoints the struggles of excluded groups—women, African Americans, and laborers—to participate in democratic government as pivotal to the development of free expression. In an age when our freedom of speech is once again at risk, this momentous book will be essential reading for legal historians, political scientists, and history buffs alike.

A Theory of Justice

A Theory of Justice PDF

Author: John RAWLS

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 0674042603

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Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Active Liberty

Active Liberty PDF

Author: Stephen Breyer

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 0307424618

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A brilliant new approach to the Constitution and courts of the United States by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.For Justice Breyer, the Constitution’s primary role is to preserve and encourage what he calls “active liberty”: citizen participation in shaping government and its laws. As this book argues, promoting active liberty requires judicial modesty and deference to Congress; it also means recognizing the changing needs and demands of the populace. Indeed, the Constitution’s lasting brilliance is that its principles may be adapted to cope with unanticipated situations, and Breyer makes a powerful case against treating it as a static guide intended for a world that is dead and gone. Using contemporary examples from federalism to privacy to affirmative action, this is a vital contribution to the ongoing debate over the role and power of our courts.

Freedom and the Construction of Europe

Freedom and the Construction of Europe PDF

Author: Quentin Skinner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-03-07

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1107033063

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Freedom, today perceived simply as a human right, was a continually contested idea in the early modern period. In Freedom and the Construction of Europe an international group of scholars explore the richness, diversity and complexity of thinking about freedom in the shaping of modernity. Volume 1 examines debates about religious and constitutional liberties, as well as exploring the tensions between free will and divine omnipotence across a continent of proliferating religious denominations. Debates about freedom have been fundamental to the construction of modern Europe, but represent a part of our intellectual heritage that is rarely examined in depth. These volumes provide materials for thinking in fresh ways not merely about the concept of freedom, but how it has come to be understood in our own time.

Eternally Vigilant

Eternally Vigilant PDF

Author: Lee C. Bollinger

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-06-01

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 022648467X

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While freedom of speech has been guaranteed us for centuries, the First Amendment as we know it today is largely a creation of the past eighty years. Eternally Vigilant brings together a group of distinguished legal scholars to reflect boldly on its past, its present shape, and what forms our understanding of it might take in the future. The result is a unique volume spanning the entire spectrum of First Amendment issues, from its philosophical underpinnings to specific issues like campaign regulation, obscenity, and the new media. "With group efforts, such as this collection of essays, it is almost inevitable that there will be a couple—and often several—duds among the bunch, or at least a dismaying repetition of ideas. Such is not the case here. . . . Whether one agrees with a given author or not (and it is possible to do both with any of the essays), each has something to add. Overall, Eternally Vigilant is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book, consistently intelligent and, at times, brilliant."—Richard J. Mollot, New York Law Journal Contributors: Lillian R. BeVier Vincent Blasi Lee C. Bollinger Stanley Fish Owen M. Fiss R. Kent Greenawalt Richard A. Posner Robert C. Post Frederick Schauer Geoffrey R. Stone David A. Strauss Cass R. Sunstein

Constitutional Faith

Constitutional Faith PDF

Author: Sanford Levinson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-09-11

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 0691152403

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"The book is intended to make clearer the ambiguities of "constitutional faith," i.e. wholehearted attachment to the Constitution as the center of one's (and ultimately the nation's) political life."--The introduction.

John Rawls: Reticent Socialist

John Rawls: Reticent Socialist PDF

Author: William A. Edmundson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-07-10

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1107173191

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The first detailed reconstruction of the late work of John Rawls, further developing his ideas of 'justice-as-fairness'.

The Reconstruction Amendments

The Reconstruction Amendments PDF

Author: Kurt T. Lash

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-04-09

Total Pages: 584

ISBN-13: 022668878X

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"The amendments to the U.S. Constitution passed in the aftermath of the Civil War not only abolished slavery but reshaped the reach of the Constitution. Kurt Lash has collected documents ranging campaign speeches and party platforms through personal diaries of leading (and obscure) figures, to the Confederate states' declarations of secession that help us understand the history and meaning of these critical amendments: the 13th (abolishing slavery), 14th (citizenship, due process, equal protection), and 15th (expands right to vote). This is a two-volume set: the first offers broad background, context, and themes ("The Ante-bellum Constitution"); and material related to the 13th Amendment, while the second volume covers the 14th and 15th Amendments, with the 14th on balance dominating the discussion due to its outsized importance and complexity"--