Table Of ContentLaw and Philosophy Library 115
Carl Wellman
Constitutional
Rights -What
They Are and
What They
Ought to Be
Law and Philosophy Library
Volume 115
Series editors
Francisco J. Laporta
Department of Law, Autonomous University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Frederick Schauer
School of Law, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.
Torben Spaak
Department of Law, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
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Carl Wellman
Constitutional Rights -What
They Are and What They
Ought to Be
Carl Wellman
Philosophy Department
Washington University in Saint Louis
Saint Louis , Missouri , USA
ISSN 1572-4395 ISSN 2215-0315 (electronic)
Law and Philosophy Library
ISBN 978-3-319-31525-6 ISBN 978-3-319-31526-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31526-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016937981
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Pref ace
T he central purpose of this book is to identify and explain the moral foundations of
constitutional rights, the moral reasons that justify recognizing and applying them
in the legal system of a nation state. A necessary preliminary is to understand what
constitutional rights are. Hence, the fi rst two chapters deal with constitutional law
and constitutional rights respectively. I argue that any adequate theory of constitu-
tional rights needs to explain four species of rights: rights of governing institutions,
public offi cials, private persons and associations.
Judges sometimes appeal to moral reasons when they interpret the content of an
established constitutional right or decide whether some claimed constitutional right
really exists. Hence, there are many references to Supreme Court cases in Chaps. 3 ,
4 , 5 and 6. These illustrate judicial reasoning about how moral reasons succeed or
fail to ground an actual constitutional right.
The focus of Chaps. 3 , 4 , 5 and 6 is ongoing political debates about controversial
constitutional rights, some established in United States law and others merely pro-
posed. It is here that the moral reasons for or against any constitutional right are
most easily identifi ed and their relevance most clear. Many of these debates are
described in some detail and examined with care in these chapters. My examina-
tions are critical, that is, they go beyond merely describing these debates to an
assessment of the relative importance of the pro and con reasons advanced and to
reach conclusions about whether each of these constitutional rights ought or ought
not to be retained in our legal system or introduced into it.
I do not imagine that I can settle any of these debates. My intentions are to assist
others to continue the ongoing discussion of controversial rights more reasonably
and to reach some theoretical conclusions about when and how moral reasons suc-
ceed or fail to justify any constitutional right. Although the focus of this book is on
constitutional rights in the United States, my theoretical theses and assessments of
the relevant moral reasons will be applicable to the constitutional law of many other
nation states.
v
Contents
1 Constitutional Law.................................................................................... 1
1 National Law ...................................................................................... 1
2 Social Practice Rules .......................................................................... 3
3 Legal Institutions ................................................................................ 5
4 National Constitutions ........................................................................ 9
5 Constitutional Law ............................................................................. 12
References ................................................................................................... 17
2 Constitutional Rights ................................................................................ 19
1 Rights .................................................................................................. 20
2 Constitutional Rights .......................................................................... 22
3 Why Both? .......................................................................................... 26
References ................................................................................................... 29
3 Constitutional Institutions........................................................................ 31
1 Federalism .......................................................................................... 31
2 The Separation of Powers ................................................................... 39
3 A Presidential System ......................................................................... 43
4 A Bicameral Legislature ..................................................................... 49
5 Exclusion ............................................................................................ 54
6 Cloture ................................................................................................ 57
7 Criminal Legislation ........................................................................... 61
8 Judicial Review ................................................................................... 64
9 Conclusions ........................................................................................ 71
References ................................................................................................... 72
4 Public Offi cials .......................................................................................... 75
1 The Presidential War Powers .............................................................. 75
2 The Removal of Administrative Offi cials ........................................... 81
3 The Line-Item Veto ............................................................................. 84
4 The Speech or Debate Immunity ........................................................ 88
vii
viii Contents
5 Life Tenure.......................................................................................... 93
6 Moral Foundations .............................................................................. 100
References ................................................................................................... 101
5 Private Persons .......................................................................................... 103
1 Life ..................................................................................................... 103
2 The Vote .............................................................................................. 107
3 Public Education ................................................................................. 112
4 Habeas Corpus .................................................................................... 119
5 Same-Sex Marriage ............................................................................ 123
6 Equal Opportunity .............................................................................. 131
7 Freedom of Speech ............................................................................. 136
8 Firearms .............................................................................................. 144
9 The Death Penalty .............................................................................. 148
10 Overview............................................................................................. 154
References ................................................................................................... 155
6 Associations ............................................................................................... 159
1 Indian Tribes ....................................................................................... 159
2 Political Parties ................................................................................... 163
3 Labor Unions ...................................................................................... 167
4 Business Corporations ........................................................................ 172
5 Private Clubs ....................................................................................... 176
6 Universities ......................................................................................... 180
7 The Press ............................................................................................ 186
8 Overview............................................................................................. 191
References ................................................................................................... 192
Postscript.......................................................................................................... 195
Chapter 1
Constitutional Law
Abstract L aw is a text-based practice, a practice of creating and applying legally
authoritative texts. A practice is defi ned as a set of social practice rules, rules
implicit in some form of established social activity. National law is made and
applied by social institutions such as legislatures and courts and administrative
agencies by which a society governs itself. Constitutional law is that body of law
that constitutes a nation state, primarily by allocating fundamental legal powers.
These may be, but need not be, codifi ed in a written document. Even when they are
codifi ed, they are supplemented by unwritten law consisting of institutional prac-
tices of interpretation and application including constitutional conventions.
Constitutional rights, in the sense that I intend to consider them, are rights con-
ferred by the constitutional law of some nation state. Hence, to understand constitu-
tional rights one must have some conception of the nature of the law of nation
states. Fortunately, one does not need any defi nition of the concept of national law
or any specifi cation of the necessary and suffi cient conditions of national law.
Instead, I will propose what I hope will be an illuminating way of thinking about the
contemporary law of nation states.
1 National Law
N ational law, the law of some nation state, is essentially institutional. It is made and
applied by social institutions such as legislatures and courts. This is as true of cus-
tomary law as it is of statute law and the common law. Customs constitute laws only
insofar as they are recognized as legally binding by the law-applying institutions of
the society. Even those theorists who reject legal positivism and insist that there is a
necessary connection between law and morality distinguish between the natural law
that exists independently of social recognition or enforcement and the human law in
force in any society. All jurists and philosophers of law agree that municipal law, the
positive law of any society, is institutional. This explains why the law of one society
is different from and independent of the law of other societies.
The law is also essentially linguistic. Laws, hence the law or the body of laws,
are formulated in language, typically in standard formulations. Modern legal sys-
tems are primarily text-centered. Their law-making institutions create authoritative
legal texts and it is upon these texts that their law-applying institutions ground their
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 1
C. Wellman, Constitutional Rights -What They Are and What They Ought to Be,
Law and Philosophy Library 115, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31526-3_1
