Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths
The Touchstone of the Natural Law

Arkes re-examines legal cases and concepts long thought settled, finding that their meaning is far less clear than commonly accepted.

Hadley Arkes (Author)

9780521518178, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 May 2010

280 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2 cm, 0.5 kg

'… a highly readable and highly recommended book that uses law to analyse the much larger issue of the way in which liberal societies are constructed and how, in order to maintain and honour that construction, we must not ignore the reality of the 'first principles' of natural law in favour of the illusory certainty of positivist constitutionalism.' Stephen Collins, The Kelvingrove Review

This book stands against the current of judgments long settled in the schools of law in regard to classic cases such as Lochner v. New York, Near v. Minnesota, the Pentagon Papers case, and Bob Jones University v. United States. Professor Hadley Arkes takes as his subject concepts long regarded as familiar, settled principles in our law - 'prior restraints', ex post facto laws - and he shows that there is actually a mystery about them, that their meaning is not as settled or clear as we have long supposed. Arkes shows this in his text, arguing that the logic of the natural law provides the key to this chain of legal puzzles.

Introduction: the anchoring common sense and the puzzles of the law
1. On the novelties of an old constitution: settled principles and unsettling surprises
2. The natural law - again, ever
3. Lochner and the cast of our law
4. The strange case of prior restraint: the Pentagon Papers
5. Near revisited
6. The saga of Frank Snepp and the new regime of previous restraints
7. And yet … a good word on behalf of the legal positivists
8. Conclusion and afterword.

Subject Areas: Law [L], Politics & government [JP]