Welfare and the Constitution Welfare and the Constitution
New Forum Books

Welfare and the Constitution

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    • $25.99

Publisher Description

Welfare and the Constitution defends a largely forgotten understanding of the U.S. Constitution: the positive or "welfarist" view of Abraham Lincoln and the Federalist Papers. Sotirios Barber challenges conventional scholarship by arguing that the government has a constitutional duty to pursue the well-being of all the people. He shows that James Madison was right in saying that the "real welfare" of the people must be the "supreme object" of constitutional government. With conceptual rigor set in fluid prose, Barber opposes the shared view of America's Right and Left: that the federal constitutional duties of public officials are limited to respecting negative liberties and maintaining processes of democratic choice.

Barber contends that no historical, scientific, moral, or metaethical argument can favor today's negative constitutionalism over Madison's positive understanding. He urges scholars to develop a substantive account of constitutional ends for use in critiquing Supreme Court decisions, the policies of elected officials, and the attitudes of the larger public. He defends the philosophical possibility of such theories while also offering a theory of his own as a starting point for the discussion the book will provoke. This theory holds, for example, that voucher schemes which drain resources from secular public schools to schools that would train citizens to submit to religious authority are unconstitutional; First Amendment issues aside, such schemes defeat what is undeniably an element of the "real welfare" of the people, individually and collectively: the capacity to think critically for oneself.

GENRE
Politics & Current Events
RELEASED
2009
January 10
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
192
Pages
PUBLISHER
Princeton University Press
SELLER
Princeton University Press
SIZE
2.1
MB

More Books by Sotirios A. Barber

Constitutional Interpretation Constitutional Interpretation
2007
The Fallacies of States' Rights The Fallacies of States' Rights
2013
Constitutional Politics Constitutional Politics
2021

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Why We Are Restless Why We Are Restless
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Speak Freely Speak Freely
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From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays
2009
After Liberalism After Liberalism
2001
Democratic Faith Democratic Faith
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