The Constitution, in Text and Spirit

Akhil Reed Amar seeks to establish a new approach to jurisprudence.

Establishing an entirely new approach to constitutional jurisprudence is hard enough, and bridging the gaps between that approach and its rivals is even harder. Yet this is exactly what Yale Law School Professor Akhil Reed Amar seeks to do in America’s Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By. While Amar is only partially successful, his efforts spur new and fascinating reflections about our founding document.
A counterpart to America’s Constitution: A Biography, Amar’s acclaimed 2005 opus, the Unwritten Constitution surveys our legal and historical landscape to chart those murky areas where our founding document’s express language gives way to implicit rights, traditional practice, and logical assumptions. Amar’s book aims to supply “the tools and techniques for going beyond the written Constitution while remaining faithful to it.”

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2013/january/the-constitution-in-text-and-spirit