Study

This seminar will investigate the possibility and promise of substantive reason in constitutional law. Doubts that reason plays any non-instrumental role in constitutional decisions often reflect a broad skepticism that constitutional law can be anything other than political decision-making in disguise. I do not share that skepticism, but I readily concede that many constitutional arguments and opinions are poorly reasoned, and that constitutional lawyers often seem unable to offer a coherent account of what they are doing, or what constitutional decision-making is or ought to be, that doesn't collapse into a species of political choice.

The course’s goal is to explore some of the resources that modern philosophy may offer constitutional lawyers in the effort to understand and practice constitutional law as a distinct and coherent form of thought and decision. Attention will be paid to the work of Alasdair MacIntyre and Iris Murdoch, among others.
Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussion and to prepare a seminar paper.