Product Description
Professor Tribe’s highly regarded treatise on constitutional law is organized around issues, or constitutional functions, rather than being a sequential discussion of the text to the Constitution. The text is heavily footnoted with references to treatises, law review articles, the U.S. Code, and Supreme Court cases. This edition will be published in two self-contained volumes to be released sequentially. Volume I concentrates on the Constitution’s provisions for g… More >>
#1 by Enigma on April 3, 2010 - 1:54 am
I could write a voluminous diatribe against this book, but I feel it would be meaningless, There are only two types of constitutional scholars in America.
1. Those that study the constitution and its original intent.
2. Those that write about it but rarely read it.
Unfortunately Laurence Tribe falls into the second category. He is unable to read and understand the original intent of the founding fathers because he is so intent upon his own revisionist interpretation. This is mainly because of his naturalistic interpretation of the law. If one would study the founding fathers and their beliefs it would be very hard to imagine this sort of indignation that Mr. Tribe befalls the USA.
Rating: 2 / 5
#2 by Anonymous on April 3, 2010 - 4:21 am
Emerson once wrote, “Habits and tradition have become a way of living secondhand, by the truths and ideas of other times, and a barrier against the soul’s insights.” Little evil minds even after a horrible civil war still yearn for the ORIGINAL INTENT of the US Constitution. “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal….” as written by Thomas Jefferson met ONLY whitemen- NOT women, NOT Native American Indains, and certainly NOT blacks or any other minority group. Yes indeed, STRICTLY WHITEMEN, period. And that was the ORIGINAL INTENT.
Professor Tribe brings a fresh naturalistic interpretation to Constitution the same way the present modern day Court does-that the phrase, “all men are created equal” is, after all, “inclusive” via the processes of judicial review and amendments, etc. that the Constitution is a living document; its words express principles, not rigid rules in juxtaposition to the preclusive views of the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Roger Brooke Taney, who characterized blacks as beings of inferior order, unfit to associate with the white race,that they had no rights that the white man was bound to respect; and the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his own benefit. Appiah & Gates,Africana,1999. Justice Taney died before he could put the veto of law on the Proclamation of Emancipation.
Aristotle believed in a timocratic state- a state in which civic honor or political power was proportional to PROPERTY one owned. Would he have allowed comparable concept such as the “Second Amendment?” It is fallacious to do so. -SGW/SF
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by Anonymous on April 3, 2010 - 5:19 am
Mr. Tribe unfortunately thinks that re-interpretation is a valid substitute for ammendment. Politically correct revisionist history notwithstanding, anything that is supposed to be authoritative (e.g. constitution) must by very definition be interpreted according to the intent of the author, not the desire of the reader. Otherwise, the liberties the document was written to protect are at perpetual risk of being interpreted away at the subjective whim of unaccountable judges. Mr. Tribe would do better to direct his efforts towards changing the actual clauses with which he disagrees rather than discredit the authority of the entire document by twisting and delegitimizing them. Even if one happens to hold the founding fathers in low esteem and reverence (as is fashionable these days to do), society is better served by making desired changes via ammending the text rather than ignoring it.
Rating: 1 / 5
#4 by Anonymous on April 3, 2010 - 8:08 am
Now that it is clear that Professor Tribe will never sit on the United States Supreme court, I can review this book the way we can now evaluate the Cold War–free from the threat of being dominated by it. So what was it that made me read this huge book back in its 1982 version? To see if I agreed or disagreed? Not really. It was more to see what my professors were talking about, as they reverently referred to “Larry” Tribe, and as they assigned various law review articles authored by Tribe to make certain points. In which I began to see a pattern. For instance, Tribe wrote that congressional action to limit Article III jurisdiction of U.S. federal courts would be a “sword of Damocles” hanging over the heads of victims of discrimination–and therefore not permissible as a political response to judicial activism. Because a little jurisdictional trim here, logically if played out to the nth degree, would mean a wholesale chain-sawing of earlier decisions relying on the previously un-trimmed scope of jursidiction. But that’s not legal reasoning. It’s more the “chicken little” school of politics, where each incremental gain is defended by invoking catastrophe if it is undone. Yet each gain was previously welcomed, so how could two steps of gain in the past now be illegal to go back to, by reversing the last decision at the margin of legal argument? That’s the basic alarmist dishonesty of this type of mock-inexorablness. And that’s what most of this treatise comes to. That, coupled with an equivalence game-theory argument of action-inaction, whereby the government (“state action”) is responsible not only for what it affirmatively does, but also for what it elects not to do, but arguably could have. We don’t spend 100% of our GNP on a government program to pay for Mr. X’s medical treatment? Well, then the state is really responsible for the effect of not paying for it. So Tribe has us coming and going. Do what he says, or pay the ever-upwardly ratcheting constitutional price. Which turns out to be infinite. Just like the founders intended, or maybe didn’t intend. No sweat, it’s all infintely provable with this kind of “reasoning.” So everyone is entitled to anything a court can be talked into giving, unless you’re not born yet, or unless you are trying to save up some money that the all-knowing government prefers to tax away, so that you, the inarticulate but hard-working schmuck with the metal stamping factory, can be subordinated to the screaming artists who need public funding (free of “censorship”) so they can make artwork no one will pay a market price for. Now, if this were so legal, wouldn’t it still hold true even in an undeveloped economy, say 13 colonies along a primitive shoreline? Or does it just “evolve” in synchronicity with the productive capacity of the minority group of wealth producers who are needed to pay for it? The positive part of Tribe is that he forces you to think by striking dismay in your heart as you read what he has planned for you, if you don’t. That, and his tome makes a good door-stopper, for the years of simple practice which follow law school. So my professors were wrong, but they were right.
Rating: 1 / 5
#5 by Joseph L. Bass on April 3, 2010 - 10:18 am
It was my understanding from a recent New York Times article that a new position would be found in the newly published Third Edition of American Constitutional Law regarding the Second Amendment. I have found what appears to be a trial balloon in pages 894 through 903 in Volume I. The index indicates the Second Amendment will be dealt with in detail in Chapters 15 and 16 in Volume II. I found the trial balloon to be a disappointment.
Credible scholarship involves as complete a review of available literature and an objective presentation of findings. That is to say, as much available information as possible is reviewed and findings are presented completely and objectively. They do not selectively present only those findings that support a biased point of view.
In Volume I, the text weaves a web of reasoning that the Second Amendment only recognizes a right of citizens to bear arms for political purposes that no longer exist in modern day America. A conclusion is reached in page 900 that “Today’s `militia’ is not the general mass of able-bodied citizens, but the very specific state National Guard and official defense units to which the Supreme Court has thus far limited the protections of the Second Amendment.” A position is also taken that the amendment does not recognize a right to keep and bear arms for self-protection or hunting. Primarily support for this reasoning comes from articles written by Akhil Reed Amar, currently a Professor of Law at Yale University, and an 1840 Tennessee Supreme Court case.
A great deal of important literature is available that would not support the views presented. The works of St. George Tucker and Henry St. George Tucker are just two examples. In early America, a law student often read nothing more than St. George Tucker’s edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries to become a practicing attorney. Tucker’s edition of the Commentaries has been referenced repeatedly by the United States Supreme Court as an authoritative source in interpreting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The following does not lend support to the positions taken.
In his edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries (Appendix) 300, 1803, St. George Tucker wrote: “The right of self-defense is the first law of nature … Wherever … the right of the people to keep and bear arms is under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
In his Commentaries on the Laws of Virginia, 43, 1831, Henry St. George Tucker, President of the Virginia Supreme Court, wrote that “the right of bearing arms” is one of the “protection of barriers [which] have been erected which serve to maintain inviolate the three primary rights of personal security, personal liberty, and private property.”
Another example is the Virginia Supreme Court found in Parrish v. Commonwealth (81 VA. 1, 12, 1884) that “The right of self-defense … is founded in the law of nature, and is not, nor can be superseded by the law of society.”
An additional example is the 1857 Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court. Chief Justise Taney delivered the majority opinion stating that Dred Scott had no standing as a citizen of the United States and, as not a citizen, could not file suit in a court in the United States. Chief Justice Taney outlined a variety of actions a slave or a free black person could not take and rights that they did not have because they were not citizens. In doing so, he outlined the rights of those who are citizens. Citizens can “enter every other state whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of the law …” Citizens can exercise “…the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects …” Citizens can “…hold public meetings upon political affairs…” Citizens can ” … keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
Also, many quotations can be found from the speeches and writings of the Founding Fathers documenting that the “militia” is “the body of the people.” In fact, it can be demonstrated that an armed citizenry is a fundamental concept of our republican system of government and that the concept of government being based upon an armed citizenry can be traced through Western political thought beginning with Aristotle.
In regard to whether or not the “militia” is recognized by the federal government today, consider United States Code, Article 10, Sec. 311, which states:
“The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.”
“The classes of the militia are (1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and (2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.”
There is a great deal of relevant information supporting the position that the Second Amendment recognizes a right of citizens to own and carry private arms. The right is based on the “natural right” of self defense and a concept of government based on an armed citizenry that is meant to keep tyrannical government in check. A complete review of the literature will reveal these findings.
Dr. Joseph L. Bass Bassjl@aol.com
Rating: 2 / 5