Print Price: $69.50

Format:
Paperback
464 pp.
156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199225798

Publication date:
April 2007

Imprint: OUP UK

Constitutional Goods

Alan Brudner

Alan Brudner is a 2011 Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada.

This book aims to distil the essentials of liberal constitutionalism from the jurisprudence and practice of contemporary liberal-democratic states. Most constitutional theorists have despaired of a liberal consensus on the fundamental goals of constitutional order. Instead they have contented themselves either with agreement on lower-level principles on which those who disagree on fundamentals may coincidentally converge, or, alternatively with a process for translating fundamental disgreement into acceptable laws.

Alan Brudner suggests a conception of fundamental justice that liberals of competing philosophic schools may accept as fulfilling their own basic commitments. He 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 an 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.

Readership : Scholars and advanced students of law, legal theory, constitutional theory, political theory, and political science.

Reviews

• `Addressing fundamental issues in public law, it also engages with a host of questions in political philosophy and is not afraid to develop a sweeping and original line of argument that challenges current orthodoxy'
  N. E. Simmonds, The Cambridge Law Journal
• `The author of Constitutional Goods has made a major contribution to political philosophy and constitutional theory. The book provides a fascinating and persuasive exposition of the foundations of liberal constitutionalism, supporting its majestic ambitions with powerful abstract analysis and finely nuanced detail. The philosophical argument and case-law analysis are skilfully integrated, as good constitutional theory requires. It is a challenging work in every sense of the word, but beautifully presented in an elegant and economically written style. It is altogether a superb achievement; and no serious constitutional theorist can ignore its powerful claim on his attention'
  T.R.S Allan, University of Toronto Law Journal
• `Constitutional Goods is a difficult work to digest, but only because of the richness of the resources that Brudner brings to the topic and because of the intelligence and subtlety of his analysis. There can, however, 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.'
  Martin Loughlin, Public Law