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Common Good Constitutionalism

Adrian Vermeule

Post-liberal legal theory

A bold and controversial manifesto for a post-liberal jurisprudence rooted in the natural-law and 'classical legal' tradition. Vermeule argues that constitutional interpretation should be governed neither by progressive living-constitutionalism nor by conservative originalism, but by the pursuit of the common good as understood in the classical and Catholic legal tradition — justice, peace, and the flourishing of the community. A leading and much-debated statement of the post-liberal legal right.

About the author

American legal scholar (b. 1968), professor at Harvard Law School and a convert to Catholicism whose thought turned sharply post-liberal. An authority on administrative and constitutional law, Vermeule became a leading and polarizing intellectual of the religious post-liberal right; Common Good Constitutionalism is his programmatic statement.

Synopsis

Vermeule argues that American law was always part of the broader 'classical legal tradition' (the ius commune), in which positive law is oriented to the common good and read in light of natural and divine law. He rejects originalism as a self-defeating concession to liberalism, and calls for judges and officials to interpret the constitution and statutes to promote justice, public morality, and the flourishing of the political community, even where that means robust state authority.

Core passage idea

Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted work

Vermeule argues that law should be interpreted not by originalist or progressive method but by orientation to the common good — the classical conviction that legitimate authority exists to secure justice, peace, and the flourishing of the community.

By grounding constitutional interpretation in the common good and the classical natural-law tradition rather than in originalism or neutrality, Vermeule offers the post-liberal right a jurisprudence of substantive moral purpose — and reopens the deepest questions about law, authority, and whose good the state should serve.

To avoid a bubble

Pair with the originalism of Scalia and the conservative legal mainstream that Vermeule rejects, with liberal constitutionalists who see his program as authoritarian and anti-democratic, and with critics who question whose 'common good' an empowered state would enforce.

Reading note

Read it as the major statement of post-liberal, natural-law jurisprudence, directly against originalism and liberal proceduralism, and alongside Deneen and Hazony on the broader post-liberal turn.

Best paired with

Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.

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