Desperately Seeking Certainty: The Misguided Quest for Constitutional Foundations

by Daniel A. Farber, Suzanna Sherry

Irreverent, provocative, and engaging, Desperately Seeking Certainty attacks the current legal vogue for grand unified theories of constitutional interpretation. On both the Right and the Left, prominent legal scholars are attempting to build all of constitutional law from a single foundational idea. Dan Farber and Suzanna Sherry find that in the end no single, all-encompassing theory can successfully guide judges or provide definitive or even sensible answers to every constitutional question. Their book brilliantly reveals how problematic foundationalism is and shows how the pragmatic, multifaceted common law methods already used by the Court provide a far better means of reaching sound decisions and controlling judicial discretion than do any of the grand theories.

Genres: Law

219 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Donald Scarinci · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite book on the difficult subject of constitutional interpretation and the various approaches to it. It is well written and understandable to any lawyer, for sure. Since I am a lawyer, I don't have any idea whether a non lawyer would appreciate it. I loved it.