Common good constitutionalism : recovering the classical legal tradition / Adrian Vermeule.

Cambridge, UK : Polity Press, 2022.

©2022

KF4550 .V465 2022

9781509548873 (paperback)
1509548874 (paperback)
9781509548866 (hardback)
1509548866 (hardback)

viii, 241 pages ; 22 cm

(OCoLC)1266642815

"The way that Americans understand their Constitution and wider legal tradition has been dominated in recent decades by two exhausted approaches: the originalism of conservatives and the 'living constitutionalism' of progressives. Is it time to look for an alternative? Adrian Vermeule argues that the alternative has been there, buried in the American legal tradition, all along. He shows that US law was, from the founding, subsumed within the broad framework of the classical legal tradition, which conceives law as 'a reasoned ordering to the common good.' In this view, law's purpose is to promote the goods a flourishing political community requires: justice, peace, prosperity, and morality. He shows how this legacy has been lost, despite still being implicit within American public law, and convincingly argues for its recovery in the form of 'common good constitutionalism.'"-- Back cover.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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