Desperately Seeking Certainty: The Misguided Quest for Constitutional Foundations

by Suzanna Sherry and Daniel A. Farber

Book Overview

Irreverent, provocative, and engaging, Desperately Seeking Certainty attacks the current legal vogue for grand unified theories of constitutional interpretation. On both the Right and the Left,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226238091
• ISBN13: 9780226238098
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 219 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Faulty

I should say first that I thoroughly enjoyed the book, simply because I wasn't familiar with many of the names within. And I enjoyed the issues the book raises, and critiquing what I thought were rather substantial fractures in its logical base. Before I get to that though, a quick exposition. The book is set up to debunk the idea of constitutional grand theory. Along these lines, six scholars are selected, a mix of both the left and right: Robert Bork, Antonin Scalia, Richard Epstein, Bruce Ackerman, Akhil Amar, and Ronald Dworkin. Each scholar gets a chapter espousing his particular philosophy, no sooner presented as subjected to critiques. Little of this is original to the authors: rather they borrow from many others in developing their criticisms. And it is in this that the book is most interesting: it serves as an informative and easily read primer for modern constitutional law. You will (at least I did) find certain critiques more persuasive than others, largely because of your political beliefs. But attempts to move beyond the descriptive leave the authors incoherent. They say they eschew grand theory in favor of pragmatism, apparently never recognizing that pragmatism is simply another grand theory. What a "grand theory" is is sadly never specified: my interpretation was that a grand theory is one that purports to give answers in most cases. If I am right, it's difficult to see why a grand theory could ever be undesirable, since the only alternative is a theory that gives no answers in some or all cases, which is simple arbitrariness. To say, as the authors do, simply act pragmatically, tells us nothing, unless pragmatism gives us an answer as to what the right decision is, and if pragmatism does that, it is simply another grand theory. My own opinion is pragmatism is a hoax. To say use pragmatism tells us nothing until we have a theory of what pragmatism entails, and once we have that, we are back in the realm of grand theory. The advantage of saying "Use pragmatism" is that what pragmatism is has not been articulated, and thus can't be falsified. At least, it has not been articulated to any sufficient caliber in this book. A more down to earth critique would focus on the shifting positions the authors use when attacking theories. They will, for instance, attack originalism on non-originalist grounds, and then when someone espouses a non-originalist theory, they will attack him on originalist grounds. Something seems unfair here. In short, as a book advancing or dethroning a theory, the book is a failure, though an interesting one. As a description of modern constitutional theory, it's delightful and if one wants to quickly learn about the topic, I'd recommend it.

Read this book!

This is a delightful book. It has a chatty, breezy, easy-to-read style (I am reminded of the style of a good review in the New York Times Book Review). It is interesting, educational, persuasively argued, and thought-provoking. After reading this book, I felt like I had learned some interesting things about some interesting people, and I wanted to know more. At times, it can be clever or funny, but not in a way that is strained or that trivializes the subject. If only more writing about legal theory were this good!