Constitutional Personae: Heroes, Soldiers, Minimalists, and Mutes

193 Pages·2015·0.735 MB·English

by  Cass R Sunstein

Constitutional Personae
Other books in the series
Not a Suicide Pact
The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency
Richard A. Posner
Supreme Neglect
How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property
Richard A. Epstein
Out of Range
Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle over Guns
Mark V. Tushnet
Unfinished Business
Racial Equality in American History
Michael J. Klarman
Is There a Right to Remain Silent?
Coercive Interrogation and the Fifth Amendment After 9/11
Alan M. Dershowitz
The Invisible Constitution
Laurence H. Tribe
Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open
A Free Press for a New Century
Lee C. Bollinger
From Disgust to Humanity
Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law
Martha C. Nussbaum
The Living Constitution
David A. Strauss
Keeping Faith with the Constitution
Goodwin Liu, Pamela S. Karlan, and Christopher H. Schroeder
Cosmic Constitutional Theory
Why Americans Are Losing Their Inalienable Right to Self-Governance
J. Harvie Wilkinson III
More Essential Than Ever
The Fourth Amendment in the Twenty-First Century
Stephen J. Schulhofer
On Constitutional Disobedience
Louis Michael Seidman
The Twilight of Human Rights Law
Eric A. Posner
I N A L I E N A B L E R I G H T S S E R I E S
. . .

SERIES EDITOR
Geoffrey R. Stone
Lee C. Bollinger Michael W. McConnell
President Richard and Frances Mallery
Columbia University Professor of Law
Stanford Law School
Alan M. Dershowitz
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Martha C. Nussbaum
Harvard Law School Ernst Freund Distinguished Service
Professor, Philosophy, Law, Divinity,
Richard A. Epstein South Asian Studies
Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law The University of Chicago
New York University School of Law
Richard A. Posner
Pamela S. Karlan Judge
Kenneth and Harle Montgomery U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh
Professor of Public Interest Law Circuit
Stanford Law School
Jack N. Rakove
Alexander Keyssar William Robertson Coe Professor of
Matthew W. Stirling, Jr., Professor of History and American Studies
History and Social Policy Stanford University
JFK School of Government, Harvard
University Christopher H. Schroeder
Charles S. Murphy Professor of Law
Michael J. Klarman Duke Law School
Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and
History Stephen J. Schulhofer
Harvard Law School Robert B. McKay Professor of Law
New York University School of Law
Larry D. Kramer
Richard E. Lang Professor of Law Geoffrey R. Stone
and Dean Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service
Stanford Law School Professor
University of Chicago Law School
Lawrence Lessig
Edmund J. Safra Professor of Law Kathleen M. Sullivan
Harvard Law School Stanley Morrison Professor of Law
Stanford Law School
Goodwin Liu
Professor of Law Cass R. Sunstein
University of California at Berkeley Robert Walmsley University Professor
School of Law Harvard Law School
Laurence H. Tribe J. Harvie Wilkinson
Carl M. Loeb University Judge
Professor of Law U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Harvard Law School Circuit
Mark V. Tushnet Kenji Yoshino
William Nelson Cromwell Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of
Professor of Law Constitutional Law
Harvard Law School New York University School of Law
Constitutional
Personae
. . .
Cass R. Sunstein
1
1

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of
Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence
in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.
Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
© Cass R. Sunstein 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under
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Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sunstein, Cass R. author.
Constitutional personae / Cass R. Sunstein.
pages cm
“The leading Personae are Heroes, Soldiers, Minimalists, and Mutes” — Chapter one.
ISBN 978-0-19-022267-3 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Constitutional law—United States. I. Title.
KF4550.S833 2015
342.73—dc23
2015002226
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Contents
. . .
Editor’s Note
ix

Preface
xiii
Chapter one

Constitutional Personae
1
Chapter two

Interpretation
43
Chapter three

Burkean Minimalism
67
Chapter four

Unanimity and Disagreement
109
Contents

Closing Words: Rules of Attraction
145

Acknowledgments
153

Notes
155
Index
161
[ viii ]
Editor’s Note
. . .
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalien-
…
able Rights .
—The Declaration of Independence
The supreme court is, of course, central to our understanding of
our inalienable rights. It therefore follows that, to understand those
rights, we must understand the Supreme Court. In Constitutional
Personae, Cass Sunstein illuminates the behavior of both the justices
and the Supreme Court as an institution. He first explores the differ-
ent stances that justices take to the challenge of constitutional deci-
sion making. Although these stances (or “Personae”) may vary even for
the same justice from one case to the next, Sunstein astutely observes
that, in any given case involving constitutional interpretation, jus-
tices tend to adopt the character of Heroes, Soldiers, Minimalists, or
Mutes. These Personae do not necessarily correspond to any particular
theory of constitutional interpretation or to any particular “liberal” or