Welfare and the Constitution
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A Theory of Justice
A01=Sotirios A. Barber
American Council of Learned Societies
Americans
Author_Sotirios A. Barber
Authorization
Bill of rights
Category=JKS
Category=JPHC
Category=JPQB
Citizenship
Civil society
Common good
Consideration
Constitution
Constitutional amendment
Constitutional theory
Constitutionalism
Constitutionalist (UK)
Criticism
Democracy
Eminent domain
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eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Equal opportunity
Equal Protection Clause
Establishment Clause
Ethics
Federal government of the United States
Forms of government
Freedom of speech
General welfare clause
Government
Ideology
Individual and group rights
Institution
Legislature
Liberal democracy
Liberalism
Libertarian Party (United States)
Moral realism
Moral skepticism
Morality
National security
Negative liberty
Obligation
Police
Political Liberalism
Politician
Poor relief
Preamble
Provision (contracting)
Public policy
Publication
Racism
Ratification
Reasonable person
Regime
Rehnquist Court
Rights
Separation of powers
Skepticism
Slavery
Social democracy
Social justice
Social liberalism
Sovereignty
State of nature
Suggestion
Tax
Toleration
United States Constitution
Welfare
Welfare reform
Welfare rights
Welfare state
Well-being
Product details
- ISBN 9780691123752
- Weight: 255g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 14 Aug 2005
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Sotirios A. Barber is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of "On What the Constitution Means" and "The Constitution of Judicial Power", and coeditor of "Constitutional Politics" (Princeton).
