One of the most significant works about constitutional interpretation in recent years.
An incisive rethinking of the U.S. Constitution.
Sunstein, the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, begins by pointing out the irrefutable fact that “the Constitution does not contain the instructions for its own interpretation.” Thus, “no approach to constitutional interpretation is required or self-justifying.” On those grounds, he briskly swats away every jurisprudentially, philosophically, and historically justified interpretive scheme—“anti-originalist” as well as “originalist,” of the left as well as the right—that has been advanced since the 19th century. All schools and schemes of interpretation fall before his generous-spirited ax strokes. In their place, he argues, there can be only one acceptable, humane approach to judicial interpretation: the search among jurists for a “ ‘reflective equilibrum’ in which [jurists’] judgments, at multiple levels of generality, are brought into alignment with each other” in order to achieve the most democratically acceptable and fairest outcome achievable at the time. “There is no alternative to the search for reflective equilibrium,” writes the author, because “no theory makes sense for every imaginable world.” Though disarmingly and intentionally “simple and straightforward,” as well as open-hearted, common-sensical, and succinct, Sunstein’s text, given its grave and demanding subject, requires readers’ attentiveness. Despite the author’s fair-mindedness, it’s clear that his main targets are the originalist and traditionalist arguments that have recently captured the radical right and are overturning decades of settled constitutional law. Is Sunstein’s interpretive scheme strong enough to halt the further advance of originalist and traditionalist thinking on the Supreme Court? Probably not. But it’s a brave, muscular, and compelling roadblock now standing in the way of originalist ideologues. This book should be in the hands of every law student, constitutional lawyer, judge, and Supreme Court justice.
One of the most significant works about constitutional interpretation in recent years.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9780691252049
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
