Uncovering the Constitution's Moral Design

Paul R. DeHart

312 pages

Published: May 2017

4 illus., 1 table

ISBN: 9780826221308

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Price: $40.00

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About This Book: The U.S. Constitution provides a framework for our laws, but what does it have to say about morality? Paul DeHart ferrets out that document’s implicit moral assumptions, demonstrating that the Constitution presupposes a natural law to which human law must conform. His argument works toward resolving current debates over the Constitution’s normative framework while remaining detached from the social issues that divide today’s political arena.

In critiquing previous attempts at describing and evaluating the Constitution’s normative framework, DeHart demonstrates that the Constitution’s moral framework corresponds largely to classical moral theory. Using the method of Inference to the Best Explanation to ascertain our Constitution’s moral meaning, he challenges the logical coherency of modern moral philosophy, normative positivism, and other theories that the Constitution has been argued to embody, offering instead an innovative methodology that can be applied to uncovering the normative framework of other constitutions as well.
Authors and Editors: Paul R. DeHart is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas State University in San Marcos, TX.
Praise For This Book: "The analysis is thorough and convincing. One is reminded time and again that while DeHart's research question is a fairly simple one—what moral framework does the Constitution presuppose?—his answers reveal a philosophical complexity to the document that will enrich his readers, indeed at times surprise them. This is an important book that deserves wide readership in political science and law. It hastens us to lift our gaze from the proximate and clamor to consider anew the rationale beyond the Constitution, and relatedly, its potentialities and limitations."—Law and Politics Book Review

"As a work of political philosophy, DeHart's book is persuasive. He provides excellent arguments supporting his view that the Constitution presupposes a classical moral framework. An innovative and significant book."—Politics and Religion

"The remarkable achievement of this [book] is that the case DeHart makes for the moral telos of the Constitution has been made now in a way that must be utterly compelling to anyone who has not closed his mind entirely to the canons of reason. This is a rare and remarkable achievement. I know of nothing else that does the work this well."—Hadley Arkes, author of First Things: An Inquiry into the First Principles of Morals and Justice

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