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July 10, 2015|Damon Root, Fourteenth Amendment, Harlan Stone, John Bingham

A Tale of Two Clauses: Damon Root’s Overruled (Part Two)

by Kurt T. Lash|

Part One of my review of Overruled: The Long War for Control of the Supreme Court summarized Damon Root’s presentation of libertarian constitutionalism as an alternative to liberal Progressivism, and to what Root sees as excessively conservative federalism. Overruled takes particular aim at constitutional federalists as unjustifiably impeding the proper reading of the Constitution and the protection of unenumerated rights against state abridgment.

Like most libertarian constitutionalists, Root believes that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause, properly read, justifies judicial enforcement of unenumerated rights, including unenumerated economic rights. The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected such a reading, initially in The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) and again in New Deal-era decisions like United States v. Carolene Products (1938). Root insists that such cases be overruled, and that advocates of federalism give up their wrongheaded efforts to limit judicial interference with the rights of local self-government.

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July 9, 2015|Damon Root, Federalism, Fourteenth Amendment, judicial deference, Judicial Review, Libertarianism, Overruled, Privileges or Immunities Clause

Fighting Federalism: Damon Root’s Overruled (Part One)

by Kurt T. Lash|

Supreme Court pundits generally have the Court’s members pegged along a simple political spectrum, with “liberal” denoting one side and “conservative” the other (with Justice Anthony Kennedy endlessly dancing from one side to the other). The assumption is that constitutional interpretation falls along a simple liberal-conservative continuum. Damon Root’s new book, Overruled: The Long War for Control of the Supreme Court, suggests that this binary view is too simplistic. A third approach, libertarianism, presents a theory of limited government power that is indebted to, and yet distinguishable from, post-New Deal liberalism and traditional social conservativism. Like most constitutional conservatives, libertarians call…

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Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

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The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O'Connor's correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

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Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

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James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

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Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

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Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

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Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

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America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

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About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

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