Law and Philosophy Commons^™

Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision And Truth, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision and Truth. By John Finnis.
Catholic University of America Press. 113 pages. $9.95.

Receipts for what the producers had the decency to call Indecent Proposal approach $100 million. The couple's earnest deliberations evidently engage. The moviegoer, I suppose, wonders with Demi and Woody: Are there some things that, no matter what, it is never right to do? Are there, in other words, absolute moral prohibitions? Is adultery one of them?

In this formidable volume, Oxford philosopher John Finnis cogently defends the common answer (for millennia, until just a few decades ago) of Jews and Christians: There …

Constitutional Theory Beyond Left And Right, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Hadley Arkes: Beyond the Constitution. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Pp. 288. $24.95.)

Hadley Arkes's latest book is Beyond the Constitution and it is virtually a tour de force. Author of The Philosopher in The City and First Things, in the new work Arkes persuasively criticizes both liberal and conservative constitutionalism as well as their common legal theoretical base, displaying all the while the philosophical astuteness and elegant prose his prior work has accustomed readers to expect. Anyone remotely interested in constitutional law should read this book.

Probing Bork's Judicial Philosophy, Gerard V. Bradley

Journal Articles

Robert Bork: The Tempting of America. (New York: The Free Press, 1989. Pp. xiv, 432. $22.50.)

In the last third of The Tempting of America Robert Bork relives the painful ordeal of his lost nomination to the Supreme Court. Any sentient American then alive already knows that story: the campaign against him was full of half-truths, distortions, and just plain lies. Bork adds some confirming anecdotes, and I congratulate him for telling the tale candidly but without rancor. The loss is ours. In my opinion, Bork would have been among the two or three greatest justices of the last …

Review Essay: Liberalism And The Supreme Court, Donald P. Kommers

Journal Articles

In Liberalism and American Constitutional Law, Rogers M. Smith of Yale University takes stock of the American liberal tradition and its impact on the Supreme Court's constitutional jurisprudence. It argues that the tradition's political vision lacks philosophical coherence and that our constitutional law, by reflecting this incoherence, has failed to provide the legal community with a public philosophy suited to the needs of American society in the late twentieth century.His goal is to demonstrate the superiority of "rational liberty," both as a philosophical theory and practical guide to constitutional policymaking, over three major competing versions of liberal constitutionalism. To wit: …