bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“Police Socialism” in Tsarist Russia
Authors: Bailey Sydney D.
Published: August 2009

All national security systems have their methods of keeping track of subversive activity. No doubt a certain number of members of subversive organizations are also police agents, and no doubt a number of police agents are also members of subversive organizations. This is as likely to have been as true of Tsarist Russia as of anywhere else. Certainly the penetration of police agents into the revolutionary movement and of revolutionaries into the secret police was carried to such lengths that in a number of well known cases it was impossible to tell whose interests were being served by certain individuals. In this article I describe four such cases—E. F. Asev, organizer of the assassination of the Russian Minister of the Interior in 1904 and of the Grand Duke Sergius in 1905; Father G. A. Gapon, the priest who led the procession of workers on “Bloody Sunday” in 1905; Bogrov, the assassin of the Russian Prime Minister in 1911; and R. V. Malinovsky, who was leader of the Bolsheviks in the Duma from 1912 until 1914.
Beyond National Interest: A Critical Evaluation of Reinhold Niebuhr's Theory of International Polities
Authors: Thompson Kenneth W.
Published: August 2009

Until more or less recently, few students of international affairs have been preoccupied with the theoretical aspects of their field. To the extent that theory is distinguished from history, law and science, this is especially true. Historians have sought to uncover the facts and recite them with the most fastidious regard for the circumstances of time and place. Lawyers have tried to detect in the case law of international agreements and treaties the normative structure of international society. Political scientists have increasingly turned to new scientific methods and statistical techniques designed to measure public opinion and its influence on foreign policy. Few scholars have concerned themselves with the fundamental characteristics of international society or of good or bad foreign policy. In this intellectual environment any explicit, systematic theory of international relations has had to await a threefold development. It has required a broader conception of the proper methods for studying international affairs, a clearer identification of basic concepts and “laws,” and a more serious discussion of fundamental theoretical problems like the relation of theory to concrete problems.
Leontiev on Nationalism
Authors: Cloutier H. Handley
Published: August 2009

In the intellectual history of Russia, Konstantin Leontiev (1831–1891) emerges as a singular and enigmatic figure. Generous and benevolent in his personal relations and a scintillating conversationalist, he encountered antagonism or indifference where his writings and theories were concerned. The extremely unique and even esoteric quality of his thought caused him to exert virtually no influence either in his own day or in more recent periods. He was not a representative member of the Russian intelligentsia; indeed, he beggars assignment to any particular school. Perhaps the best description one can make of him is that of heir to the emotional strain of German philosophical romanticism. His predilection for naturalism and aestheticism are typical of early nineteenth century German anti-rationalist philosophy, as is his emphasis on tradition and organic development. Leontiev lacked utterly the humanistic qualities of the earlier Slavophiles who first appropriated German philosophic influence, and this quality of severity divorces him from the Russian romantic tradition. At the same time, his idealism caused him to be wholly out of tune with the nihilist, revolutionary, and populist tendencies of his own day. A prophet without honour, he was not without merit; his views are most provocative and reward attention. Not the least interesting aspect of Leontiev lies in his attitude towards nationalism; and it is with this facet of his thought that we shall be concerned.
History and Man's “Nature” in Marx
Authors: O'Malley Joseph J.
Published: August 2009

In Marx's writings there is a notion of “nature” as applied to man, which is not the notion ordinarily imputed to Marx. This notion is a more fundamental one and offers the possibility of a fresh analysis of certain aspects of Marx's theory on man and society. Up to now it has not been exploited by Marx's American commentators.
Making the Hispanic World Safe from Democracy: Spanish Liberals and Hispanismo
Authors: Pike Fredrick B.
Published: August 2009

Almost from the time that the Spanish-American republics achieved their independence in the 182O's, there has existed a movement known as hispanismo, hispanoamericanismo and panhispanismo. For sake of simplicity, this movement is referred to as hispanismo throughout the present paper. What is hispanismo? This can best be answered by describing some of the fundamental beliefs of those men who have shaped and guided the movement. Although divided on innumerable matters of detail and even on some issues of fundamental significance, the champions of hispanismo, generally referred to in Spain as hispanoamericanistas, shared an unassailable faith in the existence of a transatlantic Hispanic family, community or raza.
American Aspirations and The Grounds of Hope
Authors: Hesburgh Theodore M.
Published: August 2009

American aspiration, like love, is a many-splendored thing. Its roots are deep in the history of this country. In great part, it is the sum of the aspirations of every single American who came to these shores, if they came freely as most did, seeking something splendid, something impossible for them in the land they left. In great part also, the aspirations of Americans are what can be derived from the thoughts, often conflicting, of our Founding Fathers and how these thoughts found expression in our basic documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. To these two considerations one mustadd immediately the fact that aspirations, like everything human, tend to evolve, develop and even change over time. History is a safe departure point, but the farther we progress from that primordial starting point, the greater the danger of history being rewritten to fit some modern persuasion or concern or even hope. Revisionism is a favorite indoor sport in these bicentennial days.
The Question of Machiavelli's Modernity
Authors: Parel A. J.
Published: August 2009

That Machiavelli is an innovator of political philosophy is universally acknowledged. The program of innovation is outlined in The Prince, chapter 15: he wants to depart from the orders of his predecessors. The goal of the new philosophy is “effectual truth,” and not the imagination of it. Actual states, not “imagined republics and kingdoms” are its real concerns. The distinction between how one lives and how one ought to live is still made, but only in order to point out that what is done should never be abandoned for what should be done. Preservation of the state has emerged as the new summum bonum, in the interest of which everything becomes permitted. The distinction between virtue and vice is no longer important; and the new type of ruler, if he is good, must learn how to be not good. The Preface to Discourses I also proposes a similar program: he is determined “to enter a path not yet trodden by anyone” and to introduce “new modes and orders.”
Christianity and Culture
Authors: Lobkowicz Nicholas
Published: August 2009

Christianity has influenced Western culture more than any factor save human nature itself, and yet its influence is now greatly diminished. Reactions to this have usually taken the form of a Hegelian affirmation that Christianity, having served its historical purpose, is no longer important in itself; a nostalgic conservatism which rejects the culture of modernity simply; or a revivalism which ignores it. An alternative view rests on an analysis of culture and the enlightenment process of secularization to which the Church reacted by closing in on itself until the Second Vatican Council affirmed the legitimate autonomy of the secular. The Church itself, partly to blame for secularization through its practical demystification of nature and attempt to coercively supplant all pre- and non-Christian religious experience, should engage modernity while giving witness to human dignity and promoting a more human culture. Such a constructive recovery of Christian culture must avoid both politicization and moralism.
The Making of a Native Marxist: The Early Career of Earl Browder
Authors: Ryan James Gilbert
Published: August 2009

In June, 1945, America's Communists replaced their leader, Earl Browder, who had sought an East-West détente instead of the Cold War. Eight months later they expelled him from the movement altogether, although he had spent twenty-four years in its service. Since 1934, when he had gained undisputed control, he had dominated the Communist party of the United States (CPUSA) “as no one had done before or could do afterward.” Under him it had taken advantage of the Great Depression to achieve a degree of respectability previously unknown. It even enjoyed “a measure of prestige in at least some sections of society.” Probably the best-organized political party to the left of the New Deal, during the thirties it also became the largest Marxian group by outdistancing the socialists. The CPUSA grew in number from 7,000 in 1930 to about 100,000 during the Second World War, with influence ranging far beyond its membership rolls. In contrast to its success under Browder, after his ouster it receded rapidly into political oblivion.
United States Policy Towards Eastern Europe: Before and After Helsinki
Authors: Byrnes Robert F.
Published: August 2009

The signing in Helsinki of the agreement on security and cooperation in Europe has led to bitter criticism of President Ford and of the policy under which the United States drifted into recognizing Soviet acquisition of 114,000 square miles of Finnish, Polish, German, Czechoslovak, and Romanian territory, apparently sanctified as well Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and recognized the “permanent” division of Europe. In return for endorsing these Soviet conquests, the Western states received some vague promises that the Soviet Union and the East European states would take a “positive and humanitarian attitude” towards applications from their citizens to rejoin their families in the West, would “facilitate the improvement of the dissemination” of publications from other countries, would provide three weeks' notice of large military maneuvers within 156 miles of frontiers, and assured that every European state would be free from “external influence.” All these phrases seem small recompense for such great concessions and from two years of negotiation by 492 diplomats, especially when hope in Western Europe in particular had been high for an end to jamming, censorship, and control over travel. Critics noted in particular that the formal summit agreement awarded the Soviet Union prizes it had sought since 1954, while the parallel discussion of reducing military forces in Eastern and Western Europe, in which the Soviet Union and its associates maintain immense superiorities, has long been stalled. Indeed, now that the West no longer has the lever of the Geneva talks, it has little pressure to persuade the Soviet Union to discuss mutual balanced force reductions. Many now fear that the Soviet Union will press instead for a collective security agreement, which would have no meaning, but which would totally demolish NATO, while leaving the Soviets on the commanding military heights in Eastern Europe.
New Dimensions in International Relations
Authors: Freymond Jacques
Published: August 2009

The last yearly meeting of the Club of Rome, held October 14–17, 1974, in Berlin, featured the public presentation of the “Second Report to the Club of Rome” drafted by Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel.

That report, Mankind at the Turning Point, inaugurates a new stage in research done under the auspices of the Club of Rome and it provides, in my opinion, a good basis for thinking about the evolution of the international system which frames the destiny of our nation-states.
Existentialism Politicized: Arendt's Debt to Jaspers
Authors: Hinchman Lewis P. , Hinchman Sandra K.
Published: August 2009

There has been much debate about how to locate Hannah Arendt within the tradition of political philosophy. This article argues for an “existentialist” reading, claiming that Karl Jaspers's categories reappear, politicized, in Arendt's own thought. Her language and arguments do not, in fact, become completely intelligible until read in the context of Jaspers's Existentz philosophy. The authors contend that the apparent obscurity and ambiguity of Arendt's writings owe to her attempt to stretch the framework of existentialism to fit the milieu of classical antiquity, to which it is fundamentally alien. Conversely, Arendt appropriated only those aspects of Aristotelian theory that suited her existentially defined concerns while ignoring the rest, a procedure that accounts for many of the tensions and contradictions found in her work.
The “God-Like Man” Versus the “Best Laws: Politics and Religion in Aristotle's Politics
Authors: Lindsay Thomas K.
Published: August 2009

While Plato's political dialogues give much attention to the relation of the legal and the divine, this subject receives scant notice in Aristotle's Politics. But this is not a sign that Aristotle neglects or dismisses the subject; it is in fact perfectly consistent with what the author understands to be Aristotle's view of the proper political relation of laws and gods. This view emerges indirectly, and only after reflection on the substance and manner of Aristotle's “umpiring” of a staged debate over the rule of the “best laws” versus that of the “best man” (Politics III). From the standpoint of the highest, Aristotle finds law to be both regime-derivative and somewhat prudence-impeding. At the same time, the “apolitical” character of the best man's rule necessitates the rule of law, and with it —for largely utilitarian reasons — Aristotle's public acquiescence in the apotheosis of the legal. But this teaching, and its basis, emerge fully only when the Politics' relative “silence” is interpreted in light of the open statements of a text much less palatable and thus much less accessible to statesmen and citizens (and even to political scientists): the Metaphysics. The Politics' obliqueness, argues the author, owes to the fact that Aristotle's final understanding of the relation of laws and gods cannot be fully disclosed publicly if it is to achieve its end of improving public life.
American Exceptionalism and Social Security: Complementary Cultural and Structural Contributions to Social Program Development
Authors: Lockhart Charles
Published: August 2009

Although scholars routinely agree that a relative absence of socialism marks one way in which the United States is exceptional, they have argued over why we are distinct in this way. As representatives of an enduring comparative public policy issue, two “camps” of analysts have offered broad, competing explanations resting on cultural and structural variables, respectively. This article implements a strategy for demonstrating: (1) specific cultural and structural independent variables are applied most appropriately to explain specific aspects of policy development, and (2) cultural and structural contributions are thus complementary rather than competing. I proceed by focusing on an exception to the “laggard” character of the American welfare state, the unusual success of the social security program. Dealing with the obverse of the usual “why-America-lags” concern provides a more observable dependent variable, enabling us to highlight the actual operation of distinct cultural and structural forces. I then show how this strategy can be applied to broader questions of American exceptionalism and public policy development.
Abraham Lincoln and American Constitutionalism
Authors: Belz Herman
Published: August 2009

As a contribution to scholarly discussion of Lincoln's place in the American political tradition, this article examines his conception of constitutionalism. Controversy has focused recently on whether Lincoln acted in accordance with the purposes and ideas of the framers, or whether as a wartime president he rejected the constitutionalism of the Founding in favor of a pragmatic, instrumentalist style of leadership that in effect created an organic and unwritten constitution. It has also been suggested that Lincoln's conception of fundamental law can be described as a theory of constitutional aspiration. The article rejects the latter two points of view and argues that Lincoln adhered to the written Constitution of the framers — its forms, procedures, principles, and spirit — and was guided by it in political action aimed at achieving the ideals asserted in the Declaration of Independence. Prudent and practical in his statesmanship, Lincoln possessed in himself and inculcated in the people, constitutionalist conviction that regarded the preservation of republican self-government as the nation's defining and paramount purpose.
Power, Rhetoric, and the State: A Theory of Presidential Legitimacy
Authors: Anderson Dwight G.
Published: August 2009

Most studies of presidential power assume that legitimacy is derived from the Constitution. This essay argues that presidents can become authors of their own legitimacy, whether understood in normative or behavioral terms. Specifically, the thesis is that presidential assertions of power, cloaked in an antipower rhetoric which formally honors the dominant values of the culture, have created an American state that has served as an extraconstitutional source of presidential legitimacy. It is widely believed that American constitutionalism undermined the state by destroying sovereignty. Lincoln's interpretation and use of the war power, however, denned a supreme national authority located in the presidency. In addition, his Gettysburg Address provided a paradigmatic metaphor for concealing presidential power rhetorically. Subsequent presidents have taken advantage of both effects by attempting to assert power as revolutionary principle. Linguistically, these concealments are reflected in tropes which constitute legitimizing defenses for exercise of extraordinary power.
Assessing the Impacts of Liberation Theology in Latin America
Authors: Levine Daniel H.
Published: August 2009

This article examines the nature and impact of liberation theology in Latin America and considers prospects for the future. Liberation theology's fundamental ideas are explored, and the reasons for its emergence and appeal are considered in detail. As a system of ideas, liberation theology first appears during a period of great social change, ecclesiological debate, and political upheaval. The convergence of these elements helps explain the theology's appeal within the churches, makes sense of its characteristically activist identification with the poor, and helps account for the popular appeal of the new organizational structures it has inspired. These convergences also suggest possible constraints and the long-term political impact of this theology. Throughout the article I argue that analysis of impacts must go beyond the ideas of liberation theology to ask how and why suchideasare received and acted upon in concrete settings.
Plato and the Politics of Aristotle's Poetics
Authors: Bartky Elliot
Published: August 2009

This article challenges the view that Aristotle's Poetics provides a defense against Plato's assault on poetry. I argue that Aristotle's discussion of poetry is at least as critical of the poetic depiction of the city and the gods as is the Platonic account. In the Poetics Aristotle does break with Plato in order to establish poetry's independence from philosophy. Aristotle's account of poetry as an independent activity should not, however, be read as a defense of poetry against Plato's subordination of poetry to philosophy. Instead, it is argued that Aristotle establishes poetry's independence from philosophy as a corrective to Plato's resort to poetry, thereby establishing that philosophy is completely autonomous from poetry.
Liberal and Communitarian Approaches to Justification
Authors: Thigpen Robert B. , Downing Lyle A.
Published: August 2009

Liberals and communitarians differ most basically on the justification of values, a disagreement that leads to alternative approaches to social criticism. Liberals insist on cosmopolitan justification, which has universalistic criteria, while communitarians are committed to local justification based on the shared values of particular societies. Although communitarians correctly believe that justification cannot be foundationalist, the universalism of cosmopolitan justification is essential to the defense of values like freedom that are supported by both communitarians and liberals. Moreover, cosmopolitan justification is possible when understood in contextual terms. An exploration of the political implications of the human capacities of rationality and moral agency can derive universal principles as criteria for social criticism.
Citizenship and Ontology in the Liberal State
Authors: Hill Greg
Published: August 2009

Charles Taylor has developed a powerful critique of neo-Kantian liberalism and its ontological presupposition, the unencumbered self. According to Taylor, the trouble with deontological liberalism is that its neutral state is incapable of promoting the patriotic virtue that is necessary for the maintenance of liberty. This article responds to Taylor's critique by showing how the citizens of an ideal liberal state acquire a ready willingness to meet their public responsibilities in the absence of a government that promotes patriotism as a good for everyone. In particular, it draws upon Rawls's theory of justice to suggest how liberal citizens naturally develop a deep attachment to the political institutions of their community and to their fellow citizens. The concluding section of the article returns to the relationship between politics and ontology, arguing that unencumbered and situated selves are better understood as alternate moments in the life of the liberal citizen than as mutually exclusive ontological possibilities.
Black Republicans During the New Deal: the Role of Joseph W. Martin, Jr.
Authors: Kenneally James J.
Published: August 2009

In the struggle between Republicans and Democrats for the black vote half a century ago, Joseph W. Martin, Jr., congressman from Massachusetts, played a major role. Using his position as Alf Landon's East Coast campaign manager (1936), minority leader (1939–1946) and chair of the Republican National Committee (1940–1942) he managed to keep the Republican party attractive to many Afro-Americans. Furthermore, the was instrumental in preventing the GOP from abandoning its traditional commitment to blacks in order to win the allegiance of Southern white conservatives. He did this by the type of campaign he conducted, the legislation and causes he supported, and the type of Afro-American he appointed to party positions. As a result it was not until the Martin approach was abandoned in the 1960s that black support for the Republican party plummeted.
Bernanos, Drumont, and the Rise of French Fascism
Authors: Hellman John
Published: August 2009

While recent centenary celebrations held French novelist Georges Bernanos to be a leading Catholic antifascist Resistance thinker, his most original ideas really belong within that history of “French fascism” which has been elucidated in recent studies. His ardent, lifelong admiration for Edouard Drumont (+ 1917), the father of modern anti-Semitism, shaped his new kind of politics. On the very eve of the French defeat of 1940 Bernanos advocated a radical anti-Semitic, anticapitalist, spiritually oriented “national revolution,” not unlike that of the prominent writers who would support Marshall Pétain; his case illustrates why it was so difficult to find genuinely antifascist thinkers among the French Catholic intelligentsia of the period.
The Antinomies of Social Justice
Authors: Spragens Thomas A.
Published: August 2009

Theories of social justice are either hegemonic (defending a single determinate standard), skeptical (finding social justice to be radically indeterminate if not meaningless), or pluralistic (claiming that we can disqualify all but a handful of standards, but that we cannot definitively adjudicate among these). I offer here a variation of the pluralistic view, arguing that a single standard cannotbe definitive because of what is termed the antinomies of social justice. These antinomies arise where the demands of justice collide with elements of the gratuitous that are morally valid or are practically unavoidable. Where this occurs, all possible distribution rules turn out to be unfair. An important implication of the argument is that liberal democracies cannot find their grounds for consensus, as John Rawls contends, in a common attachment to principles of justice. Instead, common interests and civic friendship will always be necessary supplements to the sense of justice as a source of social bonds in a free society.
Transcendence and Political Philosophy
Authors: Schall James V.
Published: August 2009

Classical political philosophy does not claim to be superior to philosophy nor to revelation. Political philosophy is the highest of the practical sciences, itself a unique and legitimate source of specific knowledge that would limit politics to be politics. For the things beyond politics to be free to be confronted in their own nonpolitical order, the polity must itself be constructed in such a way as not to kill its saints or philosophers. Traditionally, theology has been its own science, not the queen of the practical sciences, but the queen of the sciences. This meant that theology, as an articulated statement of revelation, performed a needed check when politics itself became a substitute metaphysics. Since so much theology is itself modeled on the ideologies of modernity, classical political philosophy serves a double purpose, not only to limit the city to its own area, but to restrain those theologies based on modern ideologies. Thus political philosophy serves to allow revelation to be itself.
Coke, Corwin and the Constitution: The “Higher Law Background” Reconsidered
Authors: McDowell Gary L.
Published: August 2009

In recent years the debate over the nature and extent of judicial power in the United States has been dominated by questions concerning moral theory, unwritten constitutions, and natural law. In a significant sense, the contemporary discussion is but the continuation of the theory of judicial review first put forth by Edward S. Corwin in 1910–1911; it was this theory that the “higher law background” of American constitutional law derived from the dicta of Sir Edward Coke's opinion inBonham's Case(1610) that was given its most complete expression in Corwin's famous two-part article in theHarvard Law Reviewin 1928–29. The fact is, the influence of Coke's opinion inBonham's Casecame from within the scholarly world; its significance stems not from history but from the historians; it was largely Corwin's creation. This paper seeks to correct the record and to show the deficiencies of Corwin's understanding about the relationship of the “higher law” to the American Constitution.
The Modernization of Contemporary Chinese Law
Authors: Gregg Benjamin
Published: August 2009

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China remains the world's only major communist society. Will China's regime go the way of its Soviet counterpart, or might it survive well into the next century and beyond? I do not undertake to answer this question directly. But my analysis of one sector of contemporary Chinese society—the legal system—suggests that the Communist party is losing its tight control over several major areas of Chinese society. In the long-run the party will be progressively weakened by current trends toward legal modernization. These trends encourage more liberal (because noninstrumentalized) forms of political, and not only legal, organization.
U.S. Supreme Court Decision-Making and the Free Exercise Clause
Authors: Ignagni Joseph A.
Published: August 2009

The U.S. Supreme Court, at various times, has changed the constitutional tests it claimed to use in order to settle free exercise of religion disputes. These changes in official doctrine and the manner in which many cases have been decided have left the Supreme Court open to much criticism from legal scholars. This study differs substantially from previous work in this area. It uses a fact-attitudinal model to analyze the cases from the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist Courts. Its findings indicate that these decisions are, generally, explainable and predictable.
The Scope and Status of Prudential Liberalism
Authors: Shearmur Jeremy
Published: August 2009

The article discusses prudential liberalism: the attempt to develop classical liberal ideas upon the basis of purely prudential argument. It is argued, with particular reference to Narveson, that the universalism of classical liberalism cannot be sustained on such a basis. This faces the proponents of prudential liberalism with a problem: to reject universalism (and especially in light of the sort of example discussed in this article) would require a stronger case for rejecting our more ordinary ideas of morality than has yet been made; but if universalism is restored by recourse to nonprudential argument, prudentialism seems incoherent. In either case, the defense of their position against such criticisms would seem to lead prudential liberals away from the technical work upon which they are often engaged, and instead require them to participate in more traditional philosophical argument.
The Common Good and the Open Society
Authors: Dupré Louis
Published: August 2009

The termcommon goodhas been used in so many ways that it would be difficult to find any political thinker, however individualistically oriented, who has not, in one form or another embraced it. The classical definition, formulated in the Middle Ages on the basis of Aristotelian principles, referred to a good proper to, and attainable only by, the community, yet individually shared by its members. As such the common good is at once communal and individual. Still, it does not coincide with the sum total of particular goods and exceeds the goals of inter-individual transactions. Once the idea of community lost its ontological ultimacy (mainly under the impact of nominalist thought), a struggle originated between the traditional conception of the community as an end in itself and that of its function to protect the private interests of its members. Eventually the latter theory prevailed and, after it became reinforced by resistance movements against repressive national government policies, it led to a doctrine of individual rights as independent of society. The intellectual and moral pluralism of recent times has made theorists reluctant to attribute any specific content to the notion of a common good. At a time when national communities face an increasing integration with one another in a world of dwindling resources, such a privatization seems inappropriate. The article argues for a restoration of an idea of the common good which incorporates individual rights without separating them from their social context.
Judicial Independence and the Reality of Political Power
Authors: Rosenberg Gerald N.
Published: August 2009

Defining judicial independence as the ability of courts to make decisions in the short term without regard for the preferences of officeholders, this article empirically examines the conditions under which judicial independence is and is not likely to be found. Nine periods of intense congressional hostility to the Supreme Court are identified and Court reactions are chartered along a continuum from pure independence to total subservience. Examination of the historical record highlights five key factors related to independence and shows that judicial independence existed in only three of the periods. In the remaining six periods, the Court either refrained from hearing certain cases, issued opinions more in line with congressional preferences, or reversed itself. The article rejects the hypothesis of judicial independence, concluding that in times of congressional opposition to the Court, only under special conditions identified in the analysis will it retain its independence.
What is the Difference Between a “person” and a “human Being” within the Law
Authors: McHugh James T.
Published: August 2009

The difference between legal terms such as “person” and “human being” represents more than a question of standing or mere semantics. Within liberal democratic societies, such as the United States and Canada, such distinctions may indicate substantive differences regarding fundamental concepts such as citizenship, membership in society, and the scope and essential nature of rights and liberties. In particular, judicial decisions regarding abortion have relied upon such distinctions in order to articulate some of the fundamental issues upon which such controversies are based.
Dialogues of Toleration: Erasmus and Bodin
Authors: Remer Gary
Published: August 2009

The article examines two different types of “tolerant” dialogues, represented by Desiderius Erasmus and Jean Bodin. Erasmus offers a traditional conception of dialogue, in which the speakers are engaged in a common search for truth. This search for truth justifies toleration. To discover truth, the speakers must be free to question the other speakers' views, as well as their own. And they must respect each other because civility promotes the discovery of truth. Bodin, by contrast, presents an alternative version of the tolerant dialogue in hisColloquium heptaplomeres, a dialogue between representatives of seven different religions. While the Erasmian dialogue presupposes that (1) there is a single truth and that (2) the greater the consensus, the more successful the dialogue, in Bodin'sColloquium, the speakers do not pursue a common truth. Rather, they offer up their own particular versions of truth, unwilling to change their positions. The speakers do not agree on the truth because truth—especially religious truth—is complex, and each speaker represents a different facet of that multifaceted truth. And though the speakers remain firm in their initial convictions, they gain from the dialogue a clearer perception of their own opinions. By comparing their views with one another, the speakers come to better understand their separate truths, the sum of which constitutes the whole truth.
The Order of Presentation and the Order of Understanding in Aquinas's Account of Law
Authors: Smith Thomas W.
Published: August 2009

It is argued that natural law can be known without the aid of revelation, and so it seems to be a medium through which people of different faiths can live together and talk to each other. However, Leo Strauss argues that Aquinas's understanding of natural law cannot possibly provide such a medium because Thomas relies on Christian revelation to develop his account of natural law. To counter this claim, this article makes a distinction between the way Aquinas presents his natural law teaching to his readers in a discussion of revelation and the way he thinks human beings may come to know natural law independent of special revelation. This distinction leads to a consideration of the deepest issue dividing Strauss and Aquinas: their rival accounts of the relationship of philosophy to theology.
Hegel's Homage to Kant's Perpetual Peace: An Analysis of Hegel's Philosophy of Right §§ 321–340
Authors: Mertens Thomas
Published: August 2009

At a few places in his Philosophy of Right Hegel directly addresses the discussion with his famous predecessor Immanuel Kant. These places indicate very clearly the distinction between the two philosophical standpoints. This article focuses on Hegel's criticism of Kant's views on peace and international law. For two reasons however, it starts with Hegel's rejection of Kant's moral point of view. First, this criticism is presupposed in Hegel's rejection of Kant's view on politics. Second, at least a partial return to Kantian morality is implied in Hegel's statement that war, although not to be condemned categorically, must be limited both quantatively and qualitatively.
What Is a Supranational Constitution? An Essay in International Relations Theory
Authors: Stone Alec
Published: August 2009

Under the banner of “regime theory,” the study of international relations has experienced a massive if largely unacknowledged return to law, the study of the nature, scope, and relevance of norms international politics. Regime is shorthand for forms of institutionalized cooperation in the international system. The article provides one way to assess this movement. In part I, I develop an abstract conception of constitutions as bodies of metanorms, those higher order norms that govern how lower order norms are to be produced, applied, and interpreted. I then examine the extent to which international relations theory is equipped to recognize that some international regimes are constitutional in form (part II). In part III, I propose a means of situating all regime forms, from the most primitive to the full blown constitutional, along a continuum. The central claim is that the distinction made between international and domestic society, for the most part a matter of dogma in mainstream theory, is relative not absolute.
Law, Politics and the New Federalism: State Attorneys General as National Policymakers
Authors: Clayton Cornell W.
Published: August 2009

The activities of state attorneys general have received little scholarly attention despite their growing importance as national policymakers. This article examines how New Federalism and divided government during the past two decades has altered the political context of state legal work and how state attorneys general have responded. In addition to establishing new mechanisms for integrating state law enforcement policies, state attorneys general have assumed a more coordinated and proactive litigating posture in the federal courts. These developments have allowed states to launch effective challenges to federal law enforcement policy and to protect state regulation from federal preemption.
Liberalism and Paternalism: A Critique of Ronald Dworkin
Authors: Wolfe Christopher
Published: August 2009

Leading liberal theorist Ronald Dworkin builds a case against paternalism, rooted in his liberal ethical theory, especially the requirement of ethical integrity. But his case is successful only against less sophisticated forms of paternalism. His argument focuses too much on profound ethical convictions, failing to recognize the frequency with which people hold relatively unreflective convictions and the inevitable role of the law in helping to shape convictions. He makes concessions regarding paternalistic actions that come to be endorsed by the persons who are subject to them, but then tries to impose arbitrary limits on such endorsement. Finally, he rests his case against paternalism on the denial of transcendent standards, but is unable to avoid employing such standards himself. Building a case for certain forms of paternalism in a pluralistic liberal democracy is a difficult but necessary task, that can only proceed after removing fallacious objections like Dworkin's.
Building the Temple of Memory: Hegel's Aesthetic Narrative of History
Authors: Dienstag Joshua Foa
Published: August 2009

This article examines Hegel's philosophy of history with the intention of once again rendering it strange. Hegel's “historicism” has been accepted for so long that the actual terms of his history are rarely examined afresh. But his account of the past, it is argued here, is best understood through the vocabulary of art and beauty that he develops in theAesthetics. Historical forms cannot be wholly grasped through the vocabulary of dialectical reason, but ought to be seen as “shapes” in a strong sense. Two principle conclusions follow from this reassessment: The first is that thePhilosophy of Historyis best understood neither as an optimistic account of rational progress, nor as a tale of the “end of history” in liberal democracy, but as an attempt to “seduce us to life”—that is, an attempt to reconcile us to the world through the beauty of history. The second conclusion is that this attempt must fail. It fails because, in his effort to discern beauty in the past, Hegel imposes a completeness upon time that excludes the possibility of a future. Whether intentionally or not, Hegel's pessimism about art is transmitted to his philosophy of history. The Temple of Memory that Hegel builds to shelter our souls ends up imprisoning them instead.
Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism
Authors: Scheuerman William E.
Published: August 2009

Despite growing interest in the ideas of Carl Schmitt, twentieth-century Germany's premier right-wing authoritarian political thinker, most American scholars continue to downplay the centrality of Schmitt's legal thinking to his overall theory. This article attempts to overcome this lacuna by critically scrutinizing Schmitt's influential critique of liberal constitutionalism. However provocative, Schmitt's critique ultimately proves untenable because (1) it relies on an overly selective, even caricatured reading of the history of liberal jurisprudence and (2) it reproduces the most worrisome methodological claims of Schmitt's main intellectual opponent, Hans Kelsen's legal positivism.
Property and Protest: Political Theory and Subjective Rights in Fourteenth-Century England
Authors: Nederman Cary J.
Published: August 2009

It has become common to locate the origins of the modern notion of subjective rights theory in late medieval scholastic and juristic writings. But comparatively little effort has been made to connect medieval ideas of individual rights to some of the other key political ideas associated with it in early modern thought, such as consent, limited government, and resistance to illegitimate power. This article argues that a little-known work by the English churchman William of Pagula, known as theSpeculum Regis Edwardi III(1331–1332), constructs such a connection. Starting with the concept of a basic human right to property and its free use, William argues that the ruler must respect the individual lordship of his subjects if he is to gain and retain their love and approval. He also asserts in a rudimentary way the legitimacy of popular revolt against a government which violates their subjective rights.
Politics Versus Aesthetics: Arendt's Critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger
Authors: Biskoivski Lawrence J.
Published: August 2009

Several recent commentaries on Hannah Arendt's political thought have suggested strong connections and affinities between Arendt and Nietzsche or between Arendt and various later Nietzschean, aestheticist, or postmodernist thinkers. But a close reading of Arendt's critiques of Nietzsche and Heidegger suggests that an overemphasis on the more Nietzschean or aesthetic aspects of Arendt's work risks obscuring some vital distinctions Arendt makes or preserves concerning politics and aesthetics. More significantly, the Nietzschean or aestheticist interpretation of Arendt tends to conceal or distort Arendt's actual, highly original, and more promising response to various facets of the modern political condition.
Political Liberalism in Postcommunist Russia
Authors: Weigle Marcia A.
Published: August 2009

This article examines the discussion among Russian scholars and activists concerning the principles of political liberalism in Soviet Russia during the Gorbachev era (1985–1991) and in independent Russia during the Yeltsin presidency (1991-present). After a review of the emergence of liberalism during the Gorbachev years, the analysis focuses on three models of political liberalism which have emerged in the context of Russian postcommunist state construction. Each competing model of liberalism—statist, rule of law, and social—offers a different vision of the principles of political liberalism and the strategies necessary to institutionalize liberalism as the foundation of the postcommunist polity.
James Madison and the Problem of Founding
Authors: Rosen Gary
Published: August 2009

Though indebted to the social compact for the basic features of his political thought, James Madison found the doctrine inadequate in one essential respect: its failure to provide an account of founding. Of course, this is no simple oversight in liberal political philosophy. It reflects deep misgivings about prudence—especially when understood in its “architechtonic” sense as the height of practical reason—and the inequalities that it implies. Madison addresses this problem inFederalist, Nos. 37–40, his fullest treatment of the activities of the Federal Convention. Here he defends the classical notion of prudence, describing its relationship to the modern science of politics and suggesting how it can be reconciled with modern egalitarian principles.
On the Logic of the Performative Contradiction: Habermas and the Radical Critique of Reason
Authors: Morris Martin
Published: August 2009

Jürgen Habermas levels the charge of performative contradiction as a scathing rebuke of inconsistency in his recent engagements with post-Nietzschean and Frankfurt critical theory. Focusing on this aspect of Habermas's critique of Theodor W. Adorno, the article argues against Habermas that Adorno's radical critique of reason actually pursuesconsistencyin its radical critique of reason. It is contended that while Adorno's radical critique of reason may be total, it is not thereby hopeless and “aporetic” as critique. At root Adorno's critical theory may embody a “performative contradiction,” but this does not mean his project is necessarily incoherent or inconsistent.
France and the United Nations
Authors: Simon Yves R.
Published: August 2009

Every true Frenchman who had the privilege of listening to an Allied radio on Saturday night, November 7, experienced an outburst of hope and an overwhelming joy. The meaning of the North African expedition, its decisive importance, were as clear as anything can be. Yet, a very few days later, the French situation appeared more confused than ever.
Italian Problems in War and Peace
Authors: Sturzo Luigi
Published: August 2009

Italy is quite a mystery for many people. If we examine public opinion in the Allied countries, we soon realize that Italy was misunderstood during the “non-belligerency” period, has been studied little since her entrance into the war, is often disparaged for her military contribution, ignored in regard to her political importance, and neglected in the plans for European reconstruction.