Ronald Dworkin argues that Americans have been systematically misled about what their Constitution is, and how judges decide what it means. The Constitution, he observes, grants individual rights in extremely abstract terms. The First Amendment prohibits the passing of laws that âeoeabridge the freedom of speechâe ; the Fifth Amendment insists on âeoedue process of lawâe ; and the Fourteenth Amendment demands âeoeequal protection of the lawsâe for all persons. What does that abstract language mean when it is applied to the political controversies that divide Americansâe"about affirmative action and racial justice, abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, censorship, pornography, and homosexuality, for example? Judges, and ultimately the justices of the Supreme Court, must decide for everyone, and that gives them great power. How should they decide?Dworkin defends a particular answer to that question, which he calls the âeoemoral readingâe of the Constitution. He argues that the Bill of Rights must be understood as setting out general moral principles about liberty and equality and dignity, and that private citizens, lawyers, and finally judges must interpret and apply those general principles by posing and trying to answer more concrete moral questions. Is freedom to choose abortion really a basic moral right and would curtailing that right be a deep injustice, for example? Why? In the detailed discussions of individual constitutional issues that form the bulk of the book, Dworkin shows that our judges do decide hard constitutional cases by posing and answering such concrete moral questions. Indeed he shows that that is the only way they can decide those cases.But most judgesâe"and most politicians and most law professorsâe"pretend otherwise. They say that judges must never treat constitutional issues as moral issues because that would be âeoeundemocraticâe âe"it would mean that judges were substituting their own moral convictions for those of Congressmen and state legislators who had been elected by the people. So they insist that judges can, and should, decide in some more mechanical way which involves no fresh moral judgment on their part.The result, Dworkin shows, has been great constitutional confusion. Is the premise at the core of this confusion really sound? Is the moral readingâe"the only reading of the American Constitution that makes senseâe"really undemocratic? In spirited and illuminating discussions both of the great constitutional cases of recent years, and of general constitutional principles, Dworkin argues, to the contrary, that the distinctly American version of government under principle, based on the moral reading of the Constitution, is in fact the best account of what democracy really is.
Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Religion Arthur D. Hellman, William D. Araiza, Thomas E. Baker ... Douglas, Burton, Clark, Harlan, Brennan, Whittaker Warren, Black, Frankfurter, Douglas, Clark, Harlan, Brennan, Whittaker, ...
Summarizes important legal cases dealing with the Constitution, judicial power, war powers, federalism, taxes, state economic regulation, due process, and executive power
A Reference Guide Donald E. Lively. stitution's meaning . ... The president's disappointment in Warren was not entirely warranted and was certainly not a basis for claimed betrayal . Eisenhower had nominated Warren as chief justice less ...
[iv/v] ISBN: 978-1-5791-1164-9 (eBook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Andersen, Roger W. Skills & values—trusts and estates / Roger W. Andersen, Karen E. Boxx. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-4224-2698-2 (softbound) 1.
Collected Courses of the Academy of European Law
John E. Nowak, Ronald D. Rotunda. does not mean that the “ reasonable person ” standard is not met . The Second Element of the Miller Test . With respect to the second part of the Miller test , the Court offered " a few plain examples ...
Hopkins, W. Wat. "Negligence 10 Years After Gem." Journalism Monograph 93 (1985). — . ... New York: World Almanac Publications, 1984. TM. "Times v. Sullivan: The Music Still Plays Sweetly." Quill (March 1989): 7. Simon, Todd F.
Mark A. Graber, Howard Gillman ... 2 In an introduction to a work subtitled Lessons from the Confederate Constitution that rarely refers to slaves or slavery, Marshall L. DeRosa declares, “the model of government embodied in the CSA ...
From 1992 to 1998 violent crime began an impressive decline nationally, and the violent crime rate in the states that did not adopt “shall issue” laws fell twice as fast as in the “shall issue” states.123Even more telling, ...
Justice Ginsburg is the second woman to sit on the high court and the first Jewish justice to sit there since the retirement of Justice Arthur J. Goldberg in 1965. See U.S. Congress , Senate , Committee on the Judiciary , Hearings ...