Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | The American Prospect

The constitution in play.

Article Excerpt
RESTORING THE LOST CONSTITUTION: THE PRESUMPTION OF LIBERTY BY RANDY E. BARNETT * PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS * 357 PAGES * $32.50

EXCEPT FOR CONSERVATIVE ACTIVISTS and a few academics, virtually no one pays attention to right-wing legal theories. But if, as promised, George W. Bush in a second term hands the federal judiciary over to acolytes of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, conservative legal scholarship may prove an indispensable guide to where America is headed. The stakes involve far more than abortion rights and other high-profile legal issues.

To understand the constitutional agenda percolating on the right, a good starting point is Randy E. Barnett's accessible new book, Restoring the Lost Constitution. Barnett, who teaches law at Boston University, dissects the constitutional arguments (fashioned by lawyers and judges over the past two thirds of a century) for the principles of governance that have prevailed since the New Deal.

Most Americans take these principles for granted: sovereignty of the national electorate, empowerment of Congress as the people's surrogate to address any problem of national importance, and active judicial intervention to protect individual and minority civil and political rights, with lower priority for property rights and other economic interests. For the past two decades, however, the legal intelligentsia on the right has been beavering away at strategies to discredit the...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!