Saturday, November 15, 2008

10

Book #10 Active Liberty: Interpreting our Democratic Constitution by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

A bit boring; most of the main points are in the introduction and conclusion. Basically, Breyer says that the constitution was designed as a framework for making decisions meaning: Where the constitution doesn’t clearly resolve a problem, stop looking for an answer in its text, and start using your ingenuity and common sense. Breyer claims that a good judge must recognize the times when the language of a law prohibits it from clearly conveying the point the writers were trying to make and then make a sound decision based on what makes sense and what the writers would have thought. Breyer also claims that we need more “active liberty,” i.e. participation, in today’s government as opposed to apathy.

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