Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism is really two books in one. The first is an exposition and defense of the classical view of what law is—an ordinance of right reason for the common good, directed toward the objective of human flourishing. The second, by contrast, is a treatment of what this classical legal tradition, in Vermeule’s view, should look like in practice.
The distinction between these two parts—which may be loosely characterized as descriptive and normative, respectively—is drawn early on, but it is not a distinction that is maintained consistently throughout the volume. This is significant because Common Good Constitutionalism is an overtly polemical book, one that repeatedly sets up “originalism” and “progressivism” as foils of the classical legal tradition.
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