Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Our Unsettled Constitution: A New Defense of Constitutionalism and Judicial Review

Our Unsettled Constitution: A New Defense of Constitutionalism and Judicial Review

Seidman, Louis Michael

Hardcover

General Law

ISBN10: 0300085311
ISBN13: 9780300085310
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Dec 11 2001
Pages: 272
Weight: 1.16
Height: 0.89 Width: 6.34 Depth: 9.68
Language: English
Ours is an age of growing doubt about constitutional theory and of outright hostility to any theory that defends judicial review. Why should a tiny number of unelected judges be able to validate or invalidate laws on such politically controversial issues as abortion, religion, gender, and sex--or even determine how the president is elected? In this provocative book, a leading constitutional theorist offers an entirely original defense of judicial review. Louis Michael Seidman argues that judicial review is defensible if we set aside common but erroneous assumptions--that constitutional law should be independent from our political commitments and that the role of constitutional law is to settle political disagreement.

Seidman develops a theory of unsettlement. A constitution that unsettles, that destabilizes outcomes produced by the political process, creates no permanent losers nursing deep-seated grievances, he says. An unsettling constitution helps to build a community founded on consent by enticing losers into a continuing conversation. The author applies this theory to an array of well-known cases heard by the Supreme Court over the past several decades, including the fall 2000 election decision.

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