Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of the Natural Law [Paperback]

Arkes re-examines legal cases and concepts long thought settled, finding that their meaning is far less clear than commonly accepted.Hadley Arkes reexamines legal cases and concepts long thought settled, such as prior restraints and ex post facto laws, finding that their meaning is far less clear than commonly accepted. He proposes that the logic of the natural law provides the key to solving the legal puzzles cast up by a series of mistakes woven into the law.Hadley Arkes reexamines legal cases and concepts long thought settled, such as prior restraints and ex post facto laws, finding that their meaning is far less clear than commonly accepted. He proposes that the logic of the natural law provides the key to solving the legal puzzles cast up by a series of mistakes woven into the law.This book stands against the current of judgments long settled in the schools of law in regard to classic cases such as Lochner v. New York, Near v. Minnesota, the Pentagon Papers case, and Bob Jones University v. United States. Professor Hadley Arkes takes as his subject concepts long regarded as familiar, settled principles in our law  prior restraints, ex post facto laws  and he shows that there is actually a mystery about them, that their meaning is not as settled or clear as we have long supposed. Those mysteries have often given rise to illusions or at least a series of puzzles in our law. They have at times acted as a lens through which we view the landscape of the law. We often see what the lens has made us used to seeing, instead of seeing what is actually there. Arkes tries to show, in this text, that the logic of the natural law provides the key to this chain of puzzles.Introduction: the anchoring common sense and the puzzles of the law; 1. On the novelties of an old constitution: settled principles and unsettling surprises; 2. The natural law - again, ever; 3. Lochner and the cast of our law; 4. The strange case of prior restraint: the Pentagon Papers; 5. Near reviló´