Reviews for Cases+readings in Markets,ethics,+law

The average rating for Cases+readings in Markets,ethics,+law based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-06-16 00:00:00 Tyler Tolson An interesting and useful little volume that guides you through ideas about rights in Anglo-American thought from the English Revolution to the Bill of Rights. Rakove guides you through these rather tough documents with a bunch of mini-essays, which were super valuable for me. He also frames the whole book around the issues of declaring rights as distinct from ideas about rights. He explores the many reasons people thought rights should be declared. In general, our modern understanding of rights-declarations as a legal doctrine to be enforced by the courts barely existed in this time period. Rather, rights were declared as checks on government power, reminders to the people of their rights and duties, and statements of principle or explanations of actions. The highlight of this volume for me was the thought of James Madison, who intellectually did not think declaring rights had much value but came around politically when he saw that the passage of the Constitution might hinge on the inclusion of a rights-declaration. Madison spells out a proto-Millian argument that the legislature might actually be a greater threat to individual rights than the executive, given the potential for the legislature to be hijacked by majorities. At the national level he wasn't too worried about this (think of his argument in Fed 10), but he thought it was far more likely at the state level, so he wanted more enforcement power at the federal level on the tendency of the states to succumb to the tyranny of the majority. This volume also gives some great introductions to anti-Federalist thought. I would say US historians should read this volume in its entirety and then use passages of it in teaching. The language is obviously very hard and the paragraph breaks few in number, but a lot of insight about the evolution of political and constitutional thought can be gleaned for students in here. Hats off the Rakove for assembling such a useful conceptual and teaching tool here.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-10-04 00:00:00 Kay Roberts 7/10