A Principled Constitution?: Four Skeptical Views [Paperback]

Is the United States Constitution the embodiment of certain principles? The four authors of this book for a variety of reasons, and with somewhat different emphases, believe the answer is no. Those who authored the Constitution no doubt all believed in liberty, equality, and, with caveats, republican self-government values, or if you will, principles. But they had different conceptions of those principles and what those principles entailed for constituting a government. Although the Constitution they created reflected, in some sense, their principles, the Constitution itself was a specific list of dos and donts that its creators hoped would gain the allegiance of the newly independent and sovereign states. And, for somewhat different reasons, the authors of this book believe that was a good thing.

Steven D. Smith is Warren Distinguished Professor of law at the University of San Diego.
Larry Alexander is Warren Distinguished Professor of law at the University of San Diego.
James Allan is Garrick Professor of law at the University of Queensland.
Maimon Schwarzschild is professor of law at the University of San Diego.

A concise and readable attack, from several different directions, on the idea that a constitution must embody principles. Even those who disagree with the authors vision will need to engage with it. Andrew Koppelman, Northwestern University School of Law

In the face of countless grandiloquent claims that the Constitution is a document of principles, values, aspirations, and much else in that vein, these four experienced and distinguished constitutional scholars argue in different ways that the Constitution best serves the purposes of constitutionalism by being understood simply, but importantly, as positive law, with all that that characterization entails and all that that characterization rejects. Frederick Schauer, University of Virginia

A Principled Constitution? is a superb set of essays that address whether col3·