'Common Good Constitutionalism' and the New Debate over Constitutional Interpretation in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conor Casey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation

The Functional Constitution: Re-Reading the 2014 High Court Constitutional Term

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosalind Dixon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Functional Approach ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
High Court ◽  
Functionalist Approach

A ‘functional’ approach to constitutional interpretation is well-accepted in many other jurisdictions, including the United States, and offers a promising middle path between the extremes of pure formalism and pragmatism. It is, however, under-developed as an approach to constitutional interpretation, rather than doctrine, in Australia. The article offers an exploration of what it would mean to adopt a more explicitly functionalist approach to the interpretation of the Constitution, drawing on constitutional cases decided by the High Court in 2014.

The Hard-Boiled Anthropocene and the Infrastructure of Extractivism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamin Creed Rowan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Environmental Resources ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
The Common ◽  
Contemporary Situation ◽  
Collective Thinking

Abstract This essay suggests that hard-boiled crime fiction in the United States has developed the kind of “deep infrastructural ethic” that John Durham Peters says is present in much modern thought. The essay attempts to illuminate the genre’s infrastructural ethic and its corresponding affordance for environmental critique by tracing its expressions through a sample of significant texts in the hard-boiled and noir canons, and by concluding with a sustained reading of Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife (2015). These readings demonstrate that hard-boiled narratives enable readers to perceive the ways in which extractivist infrastructures are frequently built upon and facilitate the exploitation of both human and environmental resources. Hard-boiled texts help readers see capitalism’s extractivist infrastructure as a type of material and intellectual entrapment that ultimately undermines the common good and the planetary commons. Further, this essay argues that hard-boiled crime fiction attends to what AbdouMaliq Simone calls “infrastructures of relationality” and thus points a way out of the material and metaphysical entrapments of an extractivist economy’s infrastructure. The infrastructures of relationality that emerge in a world in which climate crises have broken down the infrastructures of capitalism provide a platform from which individuals can practice a mode of collective thinking and being that provides an alternative to the alienation upon which extractivism depends. In short, the hard-boiled genre is not only one of the Anthropocene’s earliest cultural responders but is also a vital genre for making sense of our contemporary situation in a deeper stage of the Anthropocene.

Effective Modern Campaigns Against Inequality and Poverty in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Brooks ◽  
Amanda Gutwirth
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Public School ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Public School Educators ◽  
Macro Social Work

If one of the goals of macro social work in the United States is to decrease poverty and inequality, by most measures it has largely failed that mission over the past 40 years. After briefly documenting the four-decade rise in inequality and extreme poverty in the United States, three organizing campaigns are highlighted—living wage, Fight for $15, and strikes by public school educators—that fought hard to reverse such trends. A strategy, “bargaining for the common good,” which was implemented across those campaigns, is analyzed as a key ingredient to their success.

Saeculum–Ecclesia–Caliphate: An Eternal Golden Braid

2019 ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
Paul J. Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Church ◽  
Catholic Perspective ◽  
Secular State

The secular state, the church, and the caliphate are associations that each hold universal aspirations, at least implicitly. While the universal aspirations of the church and caliphate may be obvious enough, every state seeks dominion over the whole world. (“Secular” describes states that limit their vision to this world, as opposed to the transcendence to which both the church and caliphate appeal.) As an essay in Catholic speculative theology, Griffiths asks two questions: Whether Catholic theology supports or discourages the variety of political orders, and whether these orders could be ranked in terms of goodness from a Catholic perspective? In response to these questions, Griffiths appeals to two aspects of St. Augustine’s political thought: Political rivalries serve the common good; and the principal indicator of the degree to which a state serves the common good is its explicit service to the god of Abraham. The United States (a secular state) is compared with ISIS (an attempted caliphate).

Historical Perspective of Technoethics in Education

2009 ◽  
pp. 651-667 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. José Cortez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
Good Citizenship ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
Professional Teaching

Fundamental democratic principles and values that guide our social relationships have been important concerns in the evolution of this nation’s system of formal public schooling. With its increased use and reliance on advanced technologies, education faces some fundamental challenges that have potentially far-reaching implications for educational institutions, professional teaching strategies and practices, and student learning. This chapter explores the topic of technoethics as an applied field of ethics and research, viewed from a historical perspective of education in the United States and its embrace of technology. The underlying intent is to inform the readers’ understanding of the basic concepts of common good, citizenship, and democratic values that are the underlying precepts associated with the history of public schooling in the United States. Additionally, the author discusses the increasingly critical need for educators to address the social and ethical dilemmas associated with new technological developments and their application to educational settings.

Book Review - David A. Strauss' The Living Constitution (2010)

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1545-1552
Author(s):  
Artour Rostorotski
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Judicial Activism ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation

David Strauss' The Living Constitution addresses the issues of constitutional interpretation and judicial activism in the United States. The book supports the practice of Living Constitutionalism and attempts to demonstrate its advantages over Originalism. It presents general arguments as well as accounts of landmark decisions in order to demonstrate the superiority of Living Constitutionalism. The Living Constitution also argues for common law as the all-but-exclusive method for constitutional change in the modern United States. Overall, the book presents a well-organized and concise case for Living Constitutionalism.

I The Constitutional Court, 3 Forms and Methods of Judicial Reasoning

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barsotti Vittoria ◽  
Carozza Paolo G ◽  
Cartabia Marta ◽  
Simoncini Andrea
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
Judicial Reasoning ◽  
Constitutional Adjudication

Forms and methods of constitutional interpretation are less divisive in Italy than in the United States. In this chapter the interpretive style of the ItCC is described as “syncretistic” or “integrated” because the Court uses a combination of many different approaches to constitutional interpretation. The ItCC interprets the Constitution as a whole, as an integrated system, avoiding the fragmented interpretation of a single provision detached from the context and relationship with other principles, rules, and rights inscribed in the Constitution. This chapter also focuses on the concepts of reasonableness and proportionality, which are used synonymously in a way that is ancillary to many other constitutional principles, making them pervasive in constitutional adjudication. This chapter also studies the types of decisions of the constitutional court and their overall effects.

Civic Disengagement in Contemporary America

2001 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Putnam
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
Common Good ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Past ◽  
Life Saving ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
The Common

Over The Past Two Generations The United States Has Undergone a series of remarkable transformations. It has helped to defeat global communism, led a revolution in information technology that is fuelling unprecedented prosperity, invented life-saving treatments for diseases from AIDS to cancer, and made great strides in reversing discriminatory practices and promoting equal rights for all citizens. But during these same decades the United States also has undergone a less sanguine transformation: its citizens have become remarkably less civic, less politically engaged, less socially connected, less trusting, and less committed to the common good. At the dawn of the millennium Americans are fast becoming a loose aggregation of disengaged observers, rather than a community of connected participants.

American Catholicism, Catholic Charities U.S.A., and Welfare Reform

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Coleman ◽  
S.J.
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Catholic Charities ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
Do So

In this article I want to give at least a thumbnail sense of the background assumptions, policy contours, and vehicles for American Catholicism in engaging in public policy discussions. To do so, I will eventually concentrate on one major recent public policy discussion in the United States: the debates on welfare reform that led up to, and continue vigorously even after, the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. I do so because American Catholic institutions, including the United States Catholic Conference and Catholic Charities U.S.A., played a crucial and continuous role in these debates about welfare reform. Indeed, New York's Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, a vigorous opponent of the proposed welfare reform bill, in excoriating his fellow liberals for signing on to the bill, could lift up the example of the Catholic bishops' lobbying and exclaim: “The bishops admittedly have an easier time with matters of this sort. When principles are at stake, they simply look them up. Too many liberals, alas, make them up!” This particular debate (which is not, by any means, over) also helps to show some of the unique assumptions behind proposals found in Catholic interventions in the policy sector. In what follows, I will develop, briefly, four sections or subthemes to the paper:1. Catholilc Social Thought: Five Background Assumptions for Policy: Human Dignity; The Common Good; Solidarity; Subsidiarity; Justice2. The Move from Background Assumptions to Policy3. Catholic Policy Proposals: Their Style and Instrumentalities4. Catholicism and Welfare Policy

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