"Common Good" Constitutionalism

[Admiral Yi]

Seems to me he's not arguing for dictatorship but rather proper respect for the law and deference to legal authority.

Which to me doesn't sound so much revolutionary but rather pointless, since we already have things like failure to comply, resisting arrest, contempt for Congress, etc.  The first major Constitutional crisis of the US was the Whiskey Rebellion, which established that failure to comply with legally constituted taxation could be met with armed force.

[grumbler]

it is language like

Its main aim is certainly not to maximize individual autonomy or to minimize the abuse of power (an incoherent goal in any event), but instead to ensure that the ruler has the power needed to rule well.

that makes me think of the Enlightenment writing.  Who today believes that the central focus of government is "the ruler?"

[Tonitrus]

Maybe I'm cynical...but I felt it had more of a Hobbesian tinge. 

[ulmont]

Lemme just tag in Popehat:

Me: [opening door a crack] is that the civic cooperation I ordered

UPS guy: [looks at clipboard] naw this is fascism

Me: send it back

UPS: but shipping is free! And look how nice it's dressed!

Me: I don't care how fucking nicely it's dressed-send it back

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1245027236601679872

[MadImmortalMan]

People touting the common good are usually trying to justify doing bad things. Particularly from a moral standpoint. Utilitarian morality is a wonderful tool for that. It think it's not too far off the mark to say that just about every state-sponsored atrocity in human history was done for what the perpetrator believed was the common good.

"Law is parental"?? That makes my skin crawl.

[Sheilbh]

Is there anyone outside of this one law professor ascribing to this idea?

There's a lot of train wrecky stuff in here but just a few immediate thoughts include:
- the concept of "reason of state" is antithetical to the American constitutional idea and system. 
- rather ironic to marry a supposed politics of moral virtue to a Machiavellian grounded political theory
- police powers are exercised by states, it is a basic foundational point of the American constitutional order that the constitution does not confer general police powers on the national government.  It is frankly incredible for a constitutional law professor to make such an obvious error - so much so that it almost certainly isn't an error at all but a deliberate attempt to mislead the reader.

Yeah I've no idea. It just struck me as interesting because from what I can see he's a former Scalia clerk, he's now a Harvard professor and obviously publishing in the Atlantic. So I was wondering how much is he just an outlying but credible eccentric, or how much is he a part (albeit an extreme part) of the sort of conservative legal establishment? Is he just an oddball or is he helping groom the next generation in the pipeline of conservative judges?

[Oexmelin]

He is capitalizing, I think, on a desire for a more robust engagement with the notion of the Common Good - on the right and on the left. It's part of a backlash against neoliberalism and its general indifference to the good life. It's not expressed so directly usually, but I think it's there. There is a growing interest in my students, for instance, in stoicism (or, in my courses,  neo-stoicism, the 18th century version...)

I tend to think - from a leftist perspective - we need indeed more engagement with the notion of the Common Good. Not as justification for authoritarian policy, but rather as a constitutive part of our political life. We have quite an impoverished notion of politics right now, and I fear it will leave us rather defenseless against post-quarantine climate.

[Sheilbh]

Interestingly this guy has just been appointed by Trump to the Administrative Conference of the US, which is an independent and apparently non-partisan federal agency that recommends improvements to administrative process and procedure.

[Barrister]

Interestingly this guy has just been appointed by Trump to the Administrative Conference of the US, which is an independent and apparently non-partisan federal agency that recommends improvements to administrative process and procedure.

This is what happens when loyalty to Trump becomes the most important factor in hiring:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/15/trump-appointees-loyalty-interviews-364616