Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution - Hardcover

Breyer, Stephen

 
9780307263131: Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307263134 ISBN 13: 9780307263131
Verlag: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

This book, based on the Tanner lectures on Human Values that Justice Stephen Breyer delivered at Harvard University in November 2004, defines the term “active liberty” as a sharing of the nation’s sovereign authority with its citizens. Regarding the Constitution as a guide for the application of basic American principles to a living and changing society rather than as an arsenal of rigid legal means for binding and restricting it, Justice Breyer argues that the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems.

Giving us examples of this approach in the areas of free speech, federalism, privacy, affirmative action, statutory interpretation, and administrative law, Justice Breyer states that courts should take greater account of the Constitution’s democratic nature when they interpret constitutional and statutory texts. He also insists that the people, through participation in community life, can and must develop the experience necessary to govern their own affairs. His distinctive contribution to the federalism debate is his claim that deference to congressional power can actually promote democratic participation rather than thwart it. He argues convincingly that although Congress is not perfect, it has done a better job than either the executive or judicial branches at balancing the conflicting views of citizens across the nation, especially during times of national crisis. With a fine appreciation for complexity, Breyer reminds all Americans that Congress, rather than the courts, is the place to resolve policy disputes.

Active Liberty is a declaration of the first importance, made by a judge often regarded as one of the court’s most brilliant members.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Stephen Breyer is an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He is a resident of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.

Stephen Breyer is an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

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THE THEME: ACTIVE LIBERTY

THE THEME CONSIDERED . . .


The concept of active liberty--as I said at the outset--refers to a sharing of a nation's sovereign authority among its people. Sovereignty involves the legitimacy of a governmental action. And a sharing of sovereign authority suggests several kinds of connection between that legitimacy and the people.

For one thing, it should be possible to trace without much difficulty a line of authority for the making of governmental decisions back to the people themselves--either directly, or indirectly through those whom the people have chosen, perhaps instructed, to make certain kinds of decisions in certain ways. And this authority must be broad. The people must have room to decide and leeway to make mistakes.

For another, the people themselves should participate in government--though their participation may vary in degree. Participation is most forceful when it is direct, involving, for example, voting, town meetings, political party membership, or issue- or interest-related activities. It is weak, but still minimally exists, to the extent that it is vicarious, reflected, say, in the understanding that each individual belongs to the political community with the right to participate should he or she choose to do so.

Finally, the people, and their representatives, must have the capacity to exercise their democratic responsibilities. They should possess the tools, such as information and education, necessary to participate and to govern effectively.

When I speak of active liberty, I mean to suggest connections of this kind between the people and their government--connections that involve responsibility, participation, and capacity. Moreover, active liberty cannot be understood in a vacuum, for it operates in the real world. And in the real world, institutions and methods of interpretation must be designed in a way such that this form of liberty is both sustainable over time and capable of translating the people's will into sound policies.



. . . AS FALLING WITHIN AN INTERPRETIVE TRADITION . . .


The theme as I here consider it falls within an interpretive tradition. That tradition encompasses a particular view of democracy, as including not only the "rights of the whole people," but also "the duties of the whole people." And it calls for judicial restraint, basing that call upon both technical circumstance and democratic value. As to the first, "[c]ourts are ill-equipped to make the investigations which should precede" most legislation. As to the second, a judge's "agreement or disagreement" about the wisdom of a law "has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law." For both kinds of reasons, even if a judge knows "what the just result should be," that judge "is not to substitute even his juster will" for that of "the people." In a constitutional democracy "a deep-seated conviction on the part of the people . . . is entitled to great respect."1

That tradition sees texts as driven by purposes. The judge should try to find and "honestly . . . say what was the underlying purpose expressed" in a statute. The judge should read constitutional language "as the revelation of the great purposes which were intended to be achieved by the Constitution" itself, a "framework for" and a "continuing instrument of government." The judge should recognize that the Constitution will apply to "new subject matter . . . with which the framers were not familiar." Thus, the judge, whether applying statute or Constitution, should "reconstruct the past solution imaginatively in its setting and project the purposes which inspired it upon the concrete occasions which arise for their decision." Since law is connected to life, judges, in applying a text in light of its purpose, should look to consequences, including "contemporary conditions, social, industrial, and political, of the community to be affected." And since "the purpose of construction is the ascertainment of meaning, nothing that is logically relevant should be excluded."2

That tradition does not expect highly general instructions themselves to determine the outcome of difficult concrete cases where language is open-ended and precisely defined purpose is difficult to ascertain. Certain constitutional language, for example, reflects "fundamental aspirations and . . . 'moods,' embodied in provisions like the due process and equal protection clauses, which were designed not to be precise and positive directions for rules of action." A judge, when interpreting such open-ended provisions, must avoid being "willful, in the sense of enforcing individual views." A judge cannot "enforce whatever he thinks best." "In the exercise of" the "high power" of judicial review, says Justice Louis Brandeis, "we must be ever on our guard, lest we erect our prejudices into legal principles." At the same time, a judge must avoid being "wooden, in uncritically resting on formulas, in assuming the familiar to be the necessary, in not realizing that any problem can be solved if only one principle is involved but that unfortunately all controversies of importance involve if not a conflict at least an interplay of principles."3

How, then, is the judge to act between the bounds of the "willful" and the "wooden"? The tradition answers with an attitude, an attitude that hesitates to rely upon any single theory or grand view of law, of interpretation, or of the Constitution. It champions the need to search for purposes; it calls for restraint, asking judges to "speak . . . humbly as the voice of the law." And it finds in the democratic nature of our system more than simply a justification for judicial restraint. Holmes reminds the judge as a general matter to allow "[c]onsiderable latitude . . . for differences of view." And Learned Hand describes both legislative and judicial democratic attitudes when he says that the "spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women," the "spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias," is the "spirit of liberty" itself.4

My discussion of active liberty falls within the broad outlines of the tradition these statements suggest. But it takes place in a different time. The statements I have quoted, from Holmes, Brandeis, Stone, Frankfurter, and Hand, must be read in light of later decisions that abolished legal segregation, that gave life to the Constitution's liberty-protecting promises, that helped to make "We the People" a phrase that finally includes those whom the Constitution originally and intentionally ignored. The discussion welcomes those decisions as furthering the Constitution's basic objectives. One of my objectives is to illustrate why one can, without philosophical contradiction, essentially embrace the later decisions without essentially abandoning the traditional attitude. That is to say, the philosophical tension is sometimes less than some have imagined.5



. . . CONSISTENT WITH THE CONSTITUTION'S HISTORY



Is it reasonable from a historical perspective to view the Constitution as centrally focused upon active liberty, upon the right of individuals to participate in democratic self-government? I believe so. I have already listed various constitutional provisions that specifically further that objective. And the now standard historical accounts of the writing of the Constitution--in the works, for example, of Gordon Wood and Bernard Bailyn--make clear that active liberty,...

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Verlag
Alfred a Knopf Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307263134
ISBN 13 
9780307263131
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
161
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Knopf
https://knopfdoubleday.com

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