Document Type
Article
Publication Title
University of San Francisco Law Review
Abstract
Professor Eisgruber, in my opinion, succeeds in rebutting originalist and naive textualist approaches to the United States Constitution. He is right, I think, in arguing that moral judgments-judgments about justice, for example, and about the rights that people ought to have against one another are inescapable in constitutional law. And if he were to make the case-which in the book he rather assumes than argues for-that many of the issues on which the Constitution instructs us to make moral judgments are issues on which sound politics requires moral judgment, I would be inclined to agree with that too. What I don't agree with, however, is Professor Eisgruber's association of this last point with a defense of the role that the judiciary plays in the American system. I don't believe that the people and their representatives are necessarily bad at making moral arguments, and I don't believe that the American judiciary have shown that they are particularly good at it.
First Page
89
Volume
37
Publication Date
2002
Recommended Citation
Jeremy Waldron,
Eisgruber's House of Lords,
37
University of San Francisco Law Review
89
(2002).
Available at:
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-articles/1156
