Peopling the Constitution

The U.S. begins with soaring words We People, but we, people, have little to do with document as most of us have come to know it. When most think of constitution they think of it as a legal instrument, province of judges and lawyers, who alone possess expertise and knowledge necessary to discern its elusive and complex meaning. This book outlines a very different view of as a moral and philosophical statement about who we are as a nation. This Constitution constitutes us as a civic body politic, transforming the people into a singular political entity. Juxtaposing this view with legal model, Juridic John E. Finn offers a comprehensive account of Civic as a public affirmation of shared principles of national self-identity and as a particular vision of political community in which we play a significant and ongoing role in achieving a constitutional way of life. The Civic is constitution of dialogical engagement, of contested meanings, of political principles, of education, of conversation. Peopling seeks nothing less than a new interpretation of American constitutional project in an effort to revive a robust understanding of citizenship. It considers entire constitutional project, from its founding and maintenance to its failure, with insights into topics ranging from practise of deliberative democracy and meaning of citizenship, to constitutional fidelity, civic virtue, separation of powers, federalism, and constitutional interpretation. The Civic Constitution, in Finn's telling, is primarily a political project requiring an active, engaged, and most importantly, constitutionally educated citizenry committed to civic virtues of civility and tending. When we as citizens are unwilling or unable to tend to and sustain Constitution, and when constitutional questions reduce to legal questions and obscure civic interests, constitutional rot results. And in post-9/11 America, Finn argues, constitutional rot has begun to set in. With its multi-dimensional vision of constitutional governance, Finn's book stands as a corrective to accounts that locate in and conceive it essentially as a legal instrument, making a powerful and impassioned argument for restoring to their rightful place in politics and practise of Constitution.

Constitution · Geography · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law · 320.95 · Constitutional law · East asia · Jq1499.a58 l56 2014 · politics and government · united states

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