The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism

Download or read book The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism written by Jefferson Powell and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Locates the origins of constitutional law in the Enlightenment attempt to control the violence of the state by subjecting power to reason, then shows its evolution into a tradition of rational inquiry embodied in a community of lawyers and judges. Continues with discussion of how the tradition's 19th-century presuppositions about the autonomy and rationality of constitutional argument have been undermined in the 20th century. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR