• About
  • Contact
  • Staff

Law & Liberty

A Project of Liberty Fund

  • Home
  • Blog
  • Liberty Law Forum
  • Podcasts
  • Book Reviews

February 4, 2013|American Exceptionalism, Cass Sunstein, Obama's Second Inaugural, Second Bill of Rights

Let the Sunstein In

by Ken Masugi|5 Comments

FDRWatershed election presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt do not simply happen on election day. The significance of the election is played out in speeches that illuminate and in policy that transforms. Whether President Obama is a critical election president is yet to be determined, but his references to the Declaration and the Constitution in his second inaugural address make clear his ambition to change our understanding of who we are as a people.

Does it come as a surprise that we have been living under a new Constitution anyway, a “Second Bill of Rights” that has devoured the original document? According to Harvard Law professor and former high-ranking Obama Administration official Cass Sunstein, it’s like discovering we’ve been speaking prose all our lives. In a recent op-ed Sunstein accurately observes that President Obama’s Second Inaugural (not to mention his major actions) faithfully follows Franklin Roosevelt, who first called for a “Second Bill of Rights” in his 1944 State of the Union Address.

Read More

January 22, 2013|Abraham Lincoln, Declaration of Independence, Franklin Roosevelt's Second Inaugural Address, I Am the Change, Obama's Second Inaugural, Perpetuation Address

President Obama—Man of Words

by Ken Masugi|6 Comments

Barack Obama’s life is an open book—he wrote two autobiographies whose principal themes of constant self-renewal reinforce each other, the earlier book more philosophical and radical, the later book political and “pragmatic.” Both are equally honest accounts. Yet he continually surprises his allies, opponents, the media, and academia. With the notable exception of Charles Kesler (I Am the Change), his conservative and Republican detractors seem never to have paid his books serious heed. Obama is comparable to Abraham Lincoln in that observers constantly underestimate him. This is the context in which his Second Inaugural is to be read.

The speech’s sharp partisanship is immediately evident, though a conservative would have uttered many of its lines with pleasure (as with his 2004 Democratic convention speech). In this view, timidity, not excessive ambition, has undermined presidents in their second terms. What doesn’t destroy his second term will make him stronger.

Read More

Book Reviews

John C. Calhoun, Madisonian Manqué

by Thomas W. Merrill

His institutional innovations were geared toward preserving slavery.

Read More

The Road to Iranian Democracy

by Luma Simms

The suppression of the Green Movement last time around widened the gulf between Iran's elite and its people.

Read More

Podcasts

The Solid Ground of Mere Civility: A Conversation with Teresa Bejan

A discussion with Teresa M. Bejan

Teresa Bejan discusses with us how early modern debates over religious toleration are an example of how we can disagree well.

Read More

Leading a Worthy Life in a Scattered Time: A Conversation with Leon Kass

A discussion with Leon Kass

Leon Kass discusses Leading a Worthy Life.

Read More

Eric Voegelin Studies: A Conversation with Charles Embry

A discussion with Charles Embry

What did "Don't immanentize the eschaton!" really mean? An intro podcast on the formidable mind of Eric Voegelin.

Read More

Republican Virtue, Interrupted: A Conversation with Frank Buckley

A discussion with F.H. Buckley

The real conflict in our politics centers on reforming massive levels of public corruption.

Read More

About

Law and Liberty’s focus is on the content, status, and development of law in the context of republican and limited government and the ways that liberty and law and law and liberty mutually reinforce the other. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law and Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

  • Home
  • About
  • Staff
  • Contact
  • Archive

Apple App Store
Google Play Store

© 2018 Liberty Fund, Inc.

Subscribe
Get Law and Liberty's latest content delivered to you daily
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
No thanks