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Public Law and Legal Theory

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University of Michigan Law School

Reviews

Political philosophy

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Review Of The Dark Side Of The Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism In America, Donald J. Herzog Jan 2000

Review Of The Dark Side Of The Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism In America, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

In this elegantly written, provocative, and sometimes just plain provoking book, punctuated by bits of anguish and rather more pique, Richard Ellis worries that the American Left has been so passionate about equality that it has run roughshod over liberty. So put, the thesis is not exactly news. It has been the recurrent lament of conservative indictments- Tocqueville's is the canonical statement, but he has plenty of precursors and followers. And it has its scholarly variations, too, such as Arthur Lipow, Authoritarian Socialism in America: Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement (1982). No profound surprises are on offer here.


Review Of The Idea Of A Liberal Theory: A Critique And Reconstruction, Donald J. Herzog Jan 1995

Review Of The Idea Of A Liberal Theory: A Critique And Reconstruction, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

The flood of literature sometimes derisively referred to as the Rawls/Nozick industry shows no signs of slowing. David Johnston enters the lists to champion an unabashedly cosmopolitan view-humanist liberalism-that focuses on promoting human agency for any and all people in any and all societies. He concedes that he has in place only a rudimentary sketch.


Whose Loyalties?, Christina B. Whitman Jan 1993

Whose Loyalties?, Christina B. Whitman

Reviews

It is disconcerting to open a book subtitled An Essay on the Morality of Relationships and find that the two case studies that most interest the author are reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools and the criminalization of flag burning. Although George Fletcher begins to make his case for giving moral priority to loyalties by referring to the impulse to save one's mother from a burning house (p. 12), he is more concerned with the ties that bind individuals to groups than with the ethics of relationships between individuals. The loyalties to which Fletcher would give "moral importance" …


Review Of Willful Liberalism: Voluntarism And Individuality In Political Theory And Practice, Donald J. Herzog Jan 1993

Review Of Willful Liberalism: Voluntarism And Individuality In Political Theory And Practice, Donald J. Herzog

Reviews

This is an elegant and studied little volume, rather more difficult than it lets on. Flathman wants to argue that liberals are sorely in need of a more robust understanding of the will and individuality than they now possess, that they (or we) should be enthusiastically embracing what might seem to be some tendentious commitments about the partial but inescapable opacity of other selves. He does so by working through a large number of texts and authors-some only contentiously called liberal (Hobbes); others not conceivably liberal (William of Ockham, Augustine, Nietzsche); and still others not obviously interested in anything narrowly …