Welfare And the Constitution

by Barber, Sotirios A.

• ISBN13: 9780691123752
• ISBN10: 0691123756
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-07-25
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Welfare and the Constitutiondefends 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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Preface	xi
CHAPTER ONE Introduction: Every State a Welfare State	1	(22)
The Negative-Liberties Model of the Constitution	5	(3)
Every State a Welfare State?	8	(4)
"Welfare": How Capacious the Term?	12	(11)
CHAPTER TWO Charter of Negative Liberties: Arguments from Text and History	23	(19)
Is Positive Constitutionalism Ahistorical?	23	(13)
Welfare and the Framers	36	(6)
CHAPTER THREE Negative Constitutionalism and Unwanted Consequences	42	(23)
The Slippery Slope in General	42	(2)
Does Welfare Constitutionalism Undermine Negative Liberties?	44	(9)
A Benefits Model and Liberalism's Private Sphere	53	(2)
Does a Welfare Constitution Reach Too High?	55	(10)
CHAPTER FOUR Moral Philosophy and the Negative-Liberties Model	65	(27)
Is the Benefits Model Unjust or Unfair?	65	(3)
Is the Benefits Model Undemocratic?	68	(3)
Is the Benefits Model Antiliberal?	71	(6)
The Moral Philosophy of Positive Constitutionalism	77	(2)
Welfare and Moral Skepticism	79	(7)
Moral Philosophy and Intolerance	86	(6)
CHAPTER FIVE The Instrumental Constitution	92	(26)
Some Formal Elements of the Instrumental Constitution	92	(4)
Welfare as an End of Government	96	(4)
Well-Being in America: A Hypothesis	100	(6)
What Constitutes Well-Being?	106	(12)
CHAPTER SIX Is the Constitution Adequate to Its Ends?	118	(39)
Welfare and Power: Structure and Context of the Question	119	(3)
The Constitution's Formal Adequacy	122	(20)
Welfare and the Courts	142	(15)
Index	157