OCTOBER 2023 - AudioFile
If you've ever found yourself curious about how and why the Supreme Court does what it does--particularly during the past decade or so--this audiobook is for you. Graham Winton offers a measured yet compelling delivery of Sunstein's interpretations of recent major Court decisions and how they impact all Americans. The arguments on the correct way to interpret the Constitution could have led to a dry reading of legal arguments, statutes, and precedent. Instead, Winton gives no hints of his preferences with regard to which interpretations of the law are right or wrong, better or worse. Instead, he lets the facts surrounding recent headline-grabbing cases speak for themselves. This is an educational listen about legal matters that impact us all. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
From the Publisher
"Longlisted for the Edwards Book Award, Rodel Institute"
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-04-04
An incisive rethinking of the U.S. Constitution.
Sunstein, the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, begins by pointing out the irrefutable fact that “the Constitution does not contain the instructions for its own interpretation.” Thus, “no approach to constitutional interpretation is required or self-justifying.” On those grounds, he briskly swats away every jurisprudentially, philosophically, and historically justified interpretive scheme—“anti-originalist” as well as “originalist,” of the left as well as the right—that has been advanced since the 19th century. All schools and schemes of interpretation fall before his generous-spirited ax strokes. In their place, he argues, there can be only one acceptable, humane approach to judicial interpretation: the search among jurists for a “ ‘reflective equilibrum’ in which [jurists’] judgments, at multiple levels of generality, are brought into alignment with each other” in order to achieve the most democratically acceptable and fairest outcome achievable at the time. “There is no alternative to the search for reflective equilibrium,” writes the author, because “no theory makes sense for every imaginable world.” Though disarmingly and intentionally “simple and straightforward,” as well as open-hearted, common-sensical, and succinct, Sunstein’s text, given its grave and demanding subject, requires readers’ attentiveness. Despite the author’s fair-mindedness, it’s clear that his main targets are the originalist and traditionalist arguments that have recently captured the radical right and are overturning decades of settled constitutional law. Is Sunstein’s interpretive scheme strong enough to halt the further advance of originalist and traditionalist thinking on the Supreme Court? Probably not. But it’s a brave, muscular, and compelling roadblock now standing in the way of originalist ideologues. This book should be in the hands of every law student, constitutional lawyer, judge, and Supreme Court justice.
One of the most significant works about constitutional interpretation in recent years.
