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Welfare and the Constitution / Sotirios A. Barber.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: New Forum Books ; 49Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2009]Copyright date: ©2003Edition: Course BookDescription: 1 online resource (192 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691123752
  • 9781400825837
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 342.7302
LOC classification:
  • KF4552 .B368 2003
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Chapter One. Introduction: Every State a Welfare State -- Chapter Two. Charter of Negative Liberties: Arguments from Text and History -- Chapter Three. Negative Constitutionalism and Unwanted Consequences -- Chapter Four. Moral Philosophy and the Negative-Liberties Model -- Chapter Five. The Instrumental Constitution -- Chapter Six. Is the Constitution Adequate to Its Ends? -- Index
Summary: Welfare and the Constitution defends a largely forgotten understanding of the U.S. Constitution: the positive or "welfarist" view of Abraham Lincoln and the Federalist Papers. Sotirios Barber challenges conventional scholarship by arguing that the government has a constitutional duty to pursue the well-being of all the people. He shows that James Madison was right in saying that the "real welfare" of the people must be the "supreme object" of constitutional government. With conceptual rigor set in fluid prose, Barber opposes the shared view of America's Right and Left: that the federal constitutional duties of public officials are limited to respecting negative liberties and maintaining processes of democratic choice. Barber contends that no historical, scientific, moral, or metaethical argument can favor today's negative constitutionalism over Madison's positive understanding. He urges scholars to develop a substantive account of constitutional ends for use in critiquing Supreme Court decisions, the policies of elected officials, and the attitudes of the larger public. He defends the philosophical possibility of such theories while also offering a theory of his own as a starting point for the discussion the book will provoke. This theory holds, for example, that voucher schemes which drain resources from secular public schools to schools that would train citizens to submit to religious authority are unconstitutional; First Amendment issues aside, such schemes defeat what is undeniably an element of the "real welfare" of the people, individually and collectively: the capacity to think critically for oneself.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400825837

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Chapter One. Introduction: Every State a Welfare State -- Chapter Two. Charter of Negative Liberties: Arguments from Text and History -- Chapter Three. Negative Constitutionalism and Unwanted Consequences -- Chapter Four. Moral Philosophy and the Negative-Liberties Model -- Chapter Five. The Instrumental Constitution -- Chapter Six. Is the Constitution Adequate to Its Ends? -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Welfare and the Constitution defends a largely forgotten understanding of the U.S. Constitution: the positive or "welfarist" view of Abraham Lincoln and the Federalist Papers. Sotirios Barber challenges conventional scholarship by arguing that the government has a constitutional duty to pursue the well-being of all the people. He shows that James Madison was right in saying that the "real welfare" of the people must be the "supreme object" of constitutional government. With conceptual rigor set in fluid prose, Barber opposes the shared view of America's Right and Left: that the federal constitutional duties of public officials are limited to respecting negative liberties and maintaining processes of democratic choice. Barber contends that no historical, scientific, moral, or metaethical argument can favor today's negative constitutionalism over Madison's positive understanding. He urges scholars to develop a substantive account of constitutional ends for use in critiquing Supreme Court decisions, the policies of elected officials, and the attitudes of the larger public. He defends the philosophical possibility of such theories while also offering a theory of his own as a starting point for the discussion the book will provoke. This theory holds, for example, that voucher schemes which drain resources from secular public schools to schools that would train citizens to submit to religious authority are unconstitutional; First Amendment issues aside, such schemes defeat what is undeniably an element of the "real welfare" of the people, individually and collectively: the capacity to think critically for oneself.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)