LAWYERMENT ESHOP
View Shopping Cart or Checkout
View Larger Image
|
The Invisible Constitution (Inalienable Rights)
by Laurence H. Tribe (Author)
Average Rating: 
| List Price: | US$19.95 | | Price: | US$13.57 | | You Save: | US$6.38 (32%) |
|
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping to a single U.S. address on orders over US$25.
|
|
Product Details
- Binding: Hardcover
- ISBN-10: 019530425X
- ISBN-13: 9780195304251
- Number Of Pages: 304
- Publication Date: September 17, 2008
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Product Features
- ISBN13: 9780195304251
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Customers who bought this item also bought
Alternate Versions
Product Description
As everyone knows, the United States Constitution is a tangible, visible document. Many see it in fact as a sacred text, holding no meaning other than that which is clearly visible on the page. Yet as renowned legal scholar Laurence Tribe shows, what is not written in the Constitution plays a key role in its interpretation. Indeed some of the most contentious Constitutional debates of our time hinge on the extent to which it can admit of divergent readings.
In The Invisible Constitution, Tribe argues that there is an unseen constitution--impalpable but powerful--that accompanies the parchment version. It is the visible document's shadow, its dark matter: always there and possessing some of its key meanings and values despite its absence on the page. As Tribe illustrates, some of our most cherished and widely held beliefs about constitutional rights are not part of the written document, but can only be deduced by piecing together hints and clues from it. Moreover, some passages of the Constitution do not even hold today despite their continuing existence. Amendments may have fundamentally altered what the Constitution originally said about slavery and voting rights, yet the old provisos about each are still in the text, unrevised. Through a variety of historical episodes and key constitutional cases, Tribe brings to life this invisible constitution, showing how it has evolved and how it works. Detailing its invisible structures and principles, Tribe compellingly demonstrates the invisible constitution's existence and operative power.
Remarkably original, keenly perceptive, and written with Tribe's trademark analytical flair, this latest volume in Oxford's Inalienable Rights series offers a new way of understanding many of the central constitutional debates of our time.
Customer Reviews
Rating: 
-
Prof. Tribe attempts to explore the "dark matter"
of the U.S. Constitution in this short but turgid
exercise in 'academese'. He presents a number of
interesting ideas here, but his self-aggrandizing,
pretentious style undercuts what should have been
a well-framed, thought-provoking liberal limning of
this venerable document. I say liberal here, since
Tribe (unlike the Framers) apparently does not accept
any religious/moral basis for the "natural rights of man"
that the Constitution and its amendments properly safeguard.
It's always ironic to me that many jurists on the political
Left insist on leaving God out of the Constitutional
debate, even though many of this nation's founders
came here to create a refuge from the religious persecution
of Christianity (and Judaism) by European Church/Feudalist
powers. This isn't, and never was, a nation of atheists.
Rating: 
-
Having recently completed my reading of "The Invisible Constitution," I would like to share my thoughts regarding the books underlying theme. My initial half serious perception of the "legalese" of long and complex sentences aside, I did enjoy this book. While "legalese" causes difficulties for laymen such as myself, I am wise enough to have some insight into its purpose. Law is a subtle and complex subject, as we know it in the western hemisphere, with a history of many hundreds of years. Consequently, it seems to me that "legalese" may be necessary for the communication of those more subtle ideas of law in a way that is structured well enough for legally trained minds to accurately comprehend them.
At the heart of the author's message are the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the United States Constitution as well as the "Bill of Rights." All three strongly imply that the Constitution was designed to make a "limited government" both desirable and necessary. I'll spare you the respective texts, if you decide to read the book you'll see what I mean. The Invisible Constitution would appear then to be real and the result of the Constitution's interpreters constantly attempting to achieve the necessary balance between absolute governmental authority and effective self-government. A goal that will never be reached of course, because society is constantly changing.
The book concludes, in part, with the following text:
"It is not the visible or invisible character of our constitutional commitments but there irreducible ambiguity and multidimensionality that ensures our continuing struggle over there meaning. In the end, it is the struggle itself --- not any of the interim destinations to which it might lead --- that the constitutional quest is all about."
I wish I could say it as well but I'm sure Hamilton, Madison and my good "friend" John Adams would be duly impressed!
Charles N. Kuttruff
Rating: -
The topic of constitutional law is obviously broad and cannot be covered in depth in a book this small. but Tribe spends more than half the book explaining what he wont cover. "IF you think this book is about this.. its not.. that topic would be this.. I am gonna talk about XYZ".. The naming on the models he does eventually cover is stretched a little too thin for my liking. And there are a number of discussions that seem to originate primarily out of self defense.. I dont know this to be true, but I get the impression that one critique that he takes great pain to target is the concept something like "the invisible constitution can be made into anything we wish"..
But it was a useful book with a lot of good historical information, the early chpaters spurred mots of additional purchases because many of those things "this book is not about" were things I was intrested to pursue.
Rating: 
-
The subject is very appropriate today, but this book is so poorly written - long, complex, turgid sentences, unnecessary repetition, unnecesarily esoteric vocabulary - that I have to wonder if a professional editor reviewed it. Surely this tome cannot be expected to appeal to the ordinary citizen.
I suspect the the educational "elite" too often "are wearing no clothes".
Someone please write something in clear, concise, and common english.
Rating: 
-
I had the privilege to be taught Con Law by Prof Tribe in the 80s. Although my political views were and are somewhat to his right (although to Justice Scalia's left), I still regard him as the most brilliant teacher I encountered at HLS. His ability to synthesize complex ideas and corresponding facility to express them were astonishing. The lengthy sentences one finds in this book are exactly how he spoke in class, with not even an 'um' or 'you know' to give a notetaker a break. His facility with US law and gift of expression were all the more impressive given that he was born to Russian emigres in Shanghai and majored in math (not your typical pre-law curriculum) before law school. I was and am in awe of a mind with so much capability.
At the same time, even the most brilliant minds are not perfect. In the late 70s, Prof Tribe wrote a very long article finding, in a Rehnquist Court opinion, National League of Cities v Usery, which took the rare step of using the 10th Amendment to invalidate a federal law imposing new financial obligations on state governments relative to their employees, a reading that supported imposing an affirmative obligation to deliver "essential services" to citizens - an unlikely intention in a Rehnquist era opinion. By the time I had reached his class, Professor Tribe was telling students the article was "the dumbest thing I ever wrote" and repudiating its analysis. While that kind of intellectual honesty is incredibly admirable, it served as an invitation to all to think critically about his work generally and not accept it out of awe.
Some years ago, Prof Tribe lamented that there was no longer any coherent basis he could find for a unified approach to interpreting the Constitution. Essentially the decades of the Rehnquist Court were so at odds with what had preceded them in the 20th century, there was no logic he could find to pull the two eras together.
This book is three things: first, an effort to refute a "literalist" approach to reading the Constitution; second, a restatement of some of the fundamental themes Prof Tribe has pursued in advocacy and academically, principally in civil liberties and last an effort to reexamine whether there are in fact some coherent ways to interpret the Constitution.
On the first topic, Prof Tribe does a good job although he sets the "literalist" argument in sort of a cardboard cutout fashion, as an absolutist and sweeping argument, making the refutation easier than perhaps it might be in a debate. An example of the argument: the Constitution does not specify how it should be interpreted, thus, how can one claim literal interpretation is required by the Constitution? One must be relying on an extra-textual source, refuting one's claim to be literal. Those extra textual principles are the "dark matter' or "Invisible Constitution" that this book seeks to establish or remind the reader of.
On the second theme, this is the area where Prof Tribe has made his mark as an advocate so this part is well worth studying. To illustrate the argument,at pages 82-91 there is a discussion of a hypothetical law making it a crime to purchase or rent a residence, or host a guest in the residence without the written approval of 2/3 of the residents within 500 feet and challenges the reader to explain why such a law might be unconstitutional. Prof Tribe determines that it is because it delegates the government's decision-making to private citizens without any review by properly selected governmental officials. Plausible I guess but what I found implausible, reminiscent of Prof Tribe's own self criticism in the Usery context, was his assertion that such a law would not impair any "substantive facet of personal liberty particularly singled ... Read More
)
