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Legitimacy and History - Self-Government in American Constitutional Theory (Paperback, New edition)
Loot Price: R1,156
Discovery Miles 11 560
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Legitimacy and History - Self-Government in American Constitutional Theory (Paperback, New edition)
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Total price: R1,176
Discovery Miles: 11 760
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This powerfully conceptualized book is both a rich intellectual
history of two hundred years of American constitutional theory and
an original philosophical inquiry into the possibility of
self-government. Legitimate government in the United States means
self-government. Yet Americans also believe that their government
must be constrained by a Constitution that is now two hundred years
old. Paul W. Kahn sees the development of constitutional theory as
a continuous effort to resolve this conflict between
self-government and history. Rejecting the conventional idea that
constitutional thought has been shaped by political and social
events, Kahn argues that the history of constitutionalism has been
driven by logic, not experience. He brings this perspective to the
familiar events of constitutional history, including the founding,
the crisis of Dred Scott, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the rise of
the Lochner Court, the assault of legal realism, and the rise of
the countermajoritarian difficulty. Kahn describes a series of
conceptual stages in constitutional history. He shows that the
founders' project of constitutional construction was displaced by
originalism, which was in turn displaced by the idea of an evolving
constitution. The turn to community in contemporary constitutional
theory, Kahn argues, represents the final step in this development.
At this stage, the theory and practice of constitutional law split
apart. This separation is the inevitable result of the effort to do
the impossible: reconcile history and self-government. The
authority of the state, Kahn concludes, is bound to history in a
way that makes government by the people impossible.
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