Constitutional Goods

ISBN-13: 9780199274666 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 464 str.

Alan Brudner

Opis

In Constitutional Goods, Alan Brudner distills the essentials of liberal constitutionalism from the jurisprudence and practice of contemporary liberal-democratic states, and argues that the model liberal-democratic constitution is best understood as a unity of three constitutional frameworks: libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian. Each of these has a particular conception of public reason. Brudner criticizes each of these frameworks insofar as its organizing conception claims to be fundamental, and moves forward to suggest a Hegelian conception of public reason within which each framework is contained as a constituent element of a whole.
When viewed in this light, the liberal constitution embodies a surprising synthesis. It reconciles a commitment to individual liberty and freedom of conscience with the perfectionist idea that the state ought to cultivate a type of personality whose fundamental ends are the goods essential to dignity. Such a reconciliation, the author suggests, may attract competing liberalisms to a consensus on an inclusive conception of public reason under which political authority is validated for those who share a confidence in the individual's inviolable worth.

Recenzje

There can be no doubting the fact that this is a major contribution to constitutional scholarship, one that bears comparison with any work of constitutional scholarship to have been published in recent times.

O autorze

Alan Brudner is Albert Abel Professor of Law at the University of Toronto.