Storm Over the Constitution

Harry V. Jaffa is Professor of Political Philosophy Emeritus at Claremont McKenna College.

Written by one of America's foremost political and legal theorists, Storm Over the Constitution examines the arguments of some of the leading proponents of the doctrine of 'original intent.' According to legal scholars such as Judge Robert Bork, Lino Gralia, Charles Cooper, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a jurisprudence of original intent requires that judges bring no theory to the interpretation of the Constitution. In this brilliant new book, Harry Jaffa illustrates how judges under the influence of this definition of 'original' intent particularly neglect the Declaration of Independence as a guide. Jaffa shows that this definition is, from the point of view of the American Founding, anything but original; moreover, it is openly hostile to the natural-rights theory of those who wrote and ratified the Constitution. The author implores Americans to follow the example set by Abraham Lincoln, who admired the Declaration of Independence more openly, interpreted it more deeply, and implemented it more practically than any other president before or since. Lincoln's achievement fulfilled a tradition of civic understanding and scholarship closer in time and purpose to the founders, and was thus more 'original.'

Chapter 1 The Closing of the Conservative Mind: A Dissenting Opinion on Judge Robert H. Bork Chapter 2 Whatever Happened to the Emperor's Cloths? Jaffa Replies to Bork Chapter 3 Appendix to Whatever Happened to Emperor's Clothes? Chapter 4 Natural Law, the Constitution, and Robert Bork Chapter 5 The Inkblot Constitution Chapter 6 Is the Constitution Good? (And If So, Why?) Chapter 7 Graglia's Quarrel with God: Atheism and Nihilism Masquerading as Constitutional Argument Chapter 8 Slaying the Dragon of Bad Originalism: Jaffa Answers Cooper Chapter 9 "The Whole Theory of Democracy": Antonin Scalia, Meet James Madison and Friends Chapter 10 Afterword Chapter 11 About the Author