Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

"I found Constitutional Faith a profound and profoundly unsettling examination of the paradoxes of Constitutional history. I imagine it will be necessary reading from now on to all those readers, and not only scholars, sensitive to the delicate web of beliefs that gives cohesion to our national life and identity."--E. L. Doctorow


"The signal virtue of these fascinating travels through the metaphoric and historical life of the secular worship of the Constitution is the challenge . . . to work out the terms of one's own constitutional faith."--Michael Meltsner, The Nation


"[Levinson] brilliantly transposes his concern from the overfamiliar problem of how judges should decide cases and how they can be restrained from becoming tyrants to the question of what it means to adhere to a constitution. . . . [The book] is rich and pleasingly conversational."--Thomas Morawetz, The Philadelphia Inquirer


"Sanford Levinson is a man of the left who takes patriotism seriously. In Constitutional Faith, he offers a timely meditation on exactly what, if anything, America can stand for."--Stephen Macedo, The New Republic

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Levinson (law, Texas) has written a thoughtful and thought-provoking work that will stand out among the many works written over the bicentennial of the US Constitution as one of singular achievement. The author compares the "civil religion" of the Constitution with religious faith in a way not previously explicated. Others have looked to the Constitution as a "civil religion" which binds the nation together into a unified social order. Levinson, however, suggests that like the history of religious schism, the Constitution helps to account for secular conflict and even war in the US. By examining the religious conflicts in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as to what constitutes holy text and who is empowered to interpret it, Levinson suggests both "protestant" and "catholic" views of the Constitution. "Protestantism" argues that the Constitution consists of the text of the document alone and that its meaning is to be defined by a multiplicity of interpreters whereas "catholicism" is the view that the Constitution consists of both text and extratextual considerations such as history and tradition with a sole supreme authority as to its meaning (the Supreme Court). Hugo Black exemplifies the former and John Marshall Harlan II the latter. Within this context the author examines tensions between the Constitution and morality, loyalty oaths, and the current state of legal education. Suitable for advanced students. -M. W. Bowers, University of Nevada, Las Vegas