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Common Good Constitutionalism
The way that Americans understand their Constitution and wider legal tradition has been dominated in recent decades by two exhausted the originalism of conservatives and the “living constitutionalism” of progressives. Is it time to look for an alternative? Adrian Vermeule argues that the alternative has been there, buried in the American legal tradition, all along. He shows that US law was, from the founding, subsumed within the broad framework of the classical legal tradition, which conceives law as “a reasoned ordering to the common good.” In this view, law’s purpose is to promote the goods a flourishing political community justice, peace, prosperity, and morality. He shows how this legacy has been lost, despite still being implicit within American public law, and convincingly argues for its recovery in the form of “common good constitutionalism.” This erudite and brilliantly original book is a vital intervention in America’s most significant contemporary legal debate while also being an enduring account of the true nature of law that will resonate for decades with scholars and students.
270 pages, Hardcover
Published February 7, 2022
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409 people want to read
About the author
Adrian Vermeule
16 books33 followersAdrian Vermeule is the Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to this position, he was the Bernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. His research focuses on administrative law, the administrative state, the design of institutions, and constitutional theory.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
May 25, 2022
I've read quite a bit from the new integralists, Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Ahmari, & Rusty Reno, & their squishier allies, Rod Dreher & Ross Douthat. In terms of explaining integralism via examples & defending it via reason, this book is far & away the best primer on integralism, even accounting for its limited scope as a book about & for constitutional lawyering.
One could, of course, joke, against Vermeule's explicit purpose of recovery, about how hilarious it is that it only took US conservatives 233y to discover constitutional principles that would permit basic government interventions to safeguard health & safety, working conditions, & the environment.
Joking aside, there's much for socialists to fear here. Vermeule's criticisms of libertarian originalism, progressive living constitutionalism, & free speech absolutism are dead on. Arguing w/ libertarians is substantively easier than arguing w/ integralists. If Vermeule & these other integralists actually presage a shift in US conservatism that can embrace new developments while opposing progress, that's a much more sophisticated & potentially more dangerous enemy. Vermeule's mania against gay marriage, anti-discrimination, & abortion (under a deranged notion of the common good that opposes all 3) might portend a cultural counterrevolution. Immigration doesn't come up in the book, but it's unnerving to think about how integralists might use common good arguments to further oppress immigrants to the US.
Ultimately, answers won't be found in the courts. They'll be found in workers movements strengthening the power of democratic governance in our society & curbing or even ending judicial review. But, until we achieve that, socialists would be wise to cultivate our own common good constitutionalism to stand against these integralists, avoid the feeble & feckless pieties of progressive living constitutionalism, & fiercely argue for how gay marriage, non-discrimination, women's reproductive health, & immigrant labor enrich the common good.
One could, of course, joke, against Vermeule's explicit purpose of recovery, about how hilarious it is that it only took US conservatives 233y to discover constitutional principles that would permit basic government interventions to safeguard health & safety, working conditions, & the environment.
Joking aside, there's much for socialists to fear here. Vermeule's criticisms of libertarian originalism, progressive living constitutionalism, & free speech absolutism are dead on. Arguing w/ libertarians is substantively easier than arguing w/ integralists. If Vermeule & these other integralists actually presage a shift in US conservatism that can embrace new developments while opposing progress, that's a much more sophisticated & potentially more dangerous enemy. Vermeule's mania against gay marriage, anti-discrimination, & abortion (under a deranged notion of the common good that opposes all 3) might portend a cultural counterrevolution. Immigration doesn't come up in the book, but it's unnerving to think about how integralists might use common good arguments to further oppress immigrants to the US.
Ultimately, answers won't be found in the courts. They'll be found in workers movements strengthening the power of democratic governance in our society & curbing or even ending judicial review. But, until we achieve that, socialists would be wise to cultivate our own common good constitutionalism to stand against these integralists, avoid the feeble & feckless pieties of progressive living constitutionalism, & fiercely argue for how gay marriage, non-discrimination, women's reproductive health, & immigrant labor enrich the common good.
March 3, 2022
Common Good Constitutionalism by Adrian Vermeule is an excellent introduction to this relatively new but equally ancient idea of the Common Good in law. This is less a work of political theory, and more a work of praxis. Vermeule lays out the flaws with originalism and "living constitutionalism" and then shows how America and the Supreme Court have a rich history in the classical legal tradition and how we need to recover these traditions to serve the common good. It is a relatively short book and is fairly easy to read, though it does from time to time contain law terms that the average person may not know.
January 30, 2023
Another classic from the Harvard industrial complex as they snicker into their silk handkerchiefs at all how clever they are. Meanwhile the concept is not only fundamentally unserious but also unoriginal in every sense of the word.
I’ll save you all the read: Vermeulen proposes the Chinese style of government, but instead of the CCP it’s the jesuits running the show. Amazing that this is making waves.
I’ll save you all the read: Vermeulen proposes the Chinese style of government, but instead of the CCP it’s the jesuits running the show. Amazing that this is making waves.
September 22, 2023
First, as several reviews note, this book is primarily for lawyers. I am a lawyer, so that was not a problem for me and I found it excellent. I think anyone working in law should ready this book, and unlike so many legal works out there, it is short - about 200 pages. I think non-lawyers may struggle with this book because Vermeule presumes a certain level of background knowledge about the law and U.S. constitutional law in particular.
Second, there are two ways to read this book: it can be read as a prescription or a description. I think it works either way, but I ultimately think common-good constitutionalism is most plausible as a description of what our government and legal system *already do* - they promote peace, order, and good government. Of course small-l liberals and political Catholics like Vermeule have very different views of what "good government" looks like, but the framework of this book maps just as neatly on to what liberals (both right liberals and left liberals) do with government power. They differ mostly in that they justify their uses of power by saying they are using government to protect individual liberty rather than the common good.
Third, I encourage the reader to disregard those reviews of this book which are given over to hysteria, both on this website and others. This book has inspired an enormous amount of teeth-gnashing from left and right liberals who variously claim that Vermeule is a closet communist, leftist, China sympathizer, theocrat, fascist, etc. Vermeule himself makes this worse because he seems to delight in antagonizing them, i.e. by writing semi-sarcastic articles about turning America into the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe. But if you can ignore the noisy culture-war background, this book is an good argument for a constitutional order based on justice rather than proceduralism, and it is worth reading solely for that purpose.
Second, there are two ways to read this book: it can be read as a prescription or a description. I think it works either way, but I ultimately think common-good constitutionalism is most plausible as a description of what our government and legal system *already do* - they promote peace, order, and good government. Of course small-l liberals and political Catholics like Vermeule have very different views of what "good government" looks like, but the framework of this book maps just as neatly on to what liberals (both right liberals and left liberals) do with government power. They differ mostly in that they justify their uses of power by saying they are using government to protect individual liberty rather than the common good.
Third, I encourage the reader to disregard those reviews of this book which are given over to hysteria, both on this website and others. This book has inspired an enormous amount of teeth-gnashing from left and right liberals who variously claim that Vermeule is a closet communist, leftist, China sympathizer, theocrat, fascist, etc. Vermeule himself makes this worse because he seems to delight in antagonizing them, i.e. by writing semi-sarcastic articles about turning America into the Empire of Our Lady of Guadalupe. But if you can ignore the noisy culture-war background, this book is an good argument for a constitutional order based on justice rather than proceduralism, and it is worth reading solely for that purpose.
December 2, 2025
This is likely going to prove a very important book. Prof. Vermeule's arguments are provocative and expansive. I suspect it will prove to be a prolegomenon to a larger project undertaken by legal "conservatives" dissatisfied with "originalism."
My many disagreements aside--it is very much worth reading.
My many disagreements aside--it is very much worth reading.
July 4, 2024
A great book, although one that non-lawyers like myself probably have to read very carefully at times, since much his analysis involves reviewing significant court decisions.
What did I find most helpful or “useful” about his message?
For one thing, I believe this is a book that has something valuable to say to both those inclined to be conservative and those inclined more to the liberal side of things. This excerpt from his introduction does a great job of “setting the tone” for the bulk of the book that followed:
“...Our public law now oscillates restless and unhappily between two dominant approaches, progressivism and originalism, both of which distort the true nature of law and betray our own legal traditions. Against both camps, I argue for a view I will all call common good constitutionalism. On this view, the classical tradition should be explicitly recovered and adapted as the matrix within which American judges read our Constitution, our statutes, and our administrative law. The centerpiece of the classical legal tradition is that law should be seen as a reasoned ordering to the common good, the “art of goodness and fairness,” as the Roman jurist Ulpian put it – an act of purposive and reasoned rulership that promotes the good of law’s subjects as members of a flourishing political community, and ultimately as members of the community of peoples and nations. Accordingly, the master principle of our public law should be the classical principle that all officials have a duty, and corresponding authority, to promote the common good – albeit in a manner consistent with the requirements of their particular roles….” (P. 1)
I welcomed his strong criticism of originalism, the school of thought – or perhaps the school of interpretation – so favored by most of the members of the sitting Supreme Court who have all been heavily influenced and supported by the Federalist Society and their allies on the wealthy right.
“So-called ‘originalism,’” he notes, “…a product of the conservative legal movement’s particular political and rhetorical situation after World War II, is profoundly anachronistic, indeed counter-originalist. The classical law was deeply inscribed in our legal traditions well before the founding era…. All attempts to combine originalism with the classical view of law are ultimately incoherent, an attempt to mix oil and water.” (P. 2)
The Classical Tradition
“In the classical tradition, law is seen as – in Aquinas’ famous definition – an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by a public authority who has charge of the community. Law is seen as intrinsically reasoned and also purposive, ordered to the common good of the whole polity and that of mankind….
“…the classical tradition distinguishes…between two senses of “law,” lex and ius…. Lex is the enacted positive law, such as a statute. Ius is the overall body of law generally, including and subsuming lex but transcending it, and containing general principles of jurisprudence and legal justice…. In this tradition, “rights” very much exist, but they are not defined in the essentially individualist, autonomy-based, and libertarian fashion familiar today. Instead “rights” are corollaries of justice, which is the constant aim of giving every man his due. Ius is what is due to every person, and in that sense, but only this sense, includes rights….
“Today both progressives and originalists either deny the existence of the natural law altogether (the usual progressive view), or deny its relevant to law except in strictly historical terms, as a background belief potentially incorporated into the law laid down by the framers and ratifiers (the now-standard originalist view). Both camps therefore attempt, in different ways, to reduce all law to positive law adopted by officials; for them, all law is in this sense lex…. The classical vision of law as a rational ordering to the common good, embedded in a broader framework of legal principles, has merely been driven underground.” (P. 4)
The Common Good
“In brief, the common good is, for the purposes of the constitutional lawyer, the flourishing of a well-ordered political community. The common good is unitary and indivisible, not an aggregation of individual utilities. In its temporal aspect it represents the highest felicity or happiness of the whole political community, which is also the highest good of the individuals compromising that community.”
The “central goods at which constitutionalism should aim…include, in a famous trinity, peace, justice, and abundance, which I extrapolate to modern conditions to include various forms of health, safety, and economic security. I also elicit from the tradition the key principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.
“The largest point of the tradition is that public authority is both natural and legitimate – rather than intrinsically suspect…. Yet that authoritative rule is bounded and limited by the very condition that gives it legitimacy: that the ruling authority always act through reasoned ordinances conducing to the common good, to public rather than private interest.” (P. 7)
“In America, the classical tradition held that so long as determinations are made within the jurisdictional competence of public bodies, for legitimate ends, and on rational grounds, they are a matter for the public authority, not the courts. A strong legal principle of deference by courts to the determination of legislatures was part and parcel of our law from the beginning. One of my particular claims is that our small-c constitutional order developed over time to extend this principle to the institutional presidency and administrative tribunals. Today our constitution supports the legitimacy of broad delegations to the executive, shaped and constrained by principles of legality that ensure that the executive acts rationally in ways ordered to the common good.” (Pp. 12-13)
Conclusion
I found it encouraging that so much of Vermeule’s argument fit so well with that advanced in Anthony Annette’s fine book, Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy.
Annette, like Vermeule, places great emphasis on the long history and development of what the “common good” means and includes. Both books talk about a perspective that includes the whole rather than one that focuses on just a few. Whether the common good is being attained, both argue, can be assessed only by looking at whether or not the entire people are flourishing and prospering. If not, it is not the common good that is being pursued or embraced but, rather, that of the few. And these “few” are always the same: the wealthy and powerful.
Vermeuel’s point is that justices and courts using “reasoning” that effectively subverts legitimate legislative authority by undermining the common good, but advancing individual “rights” over the collective rights of the entire society is, in fact, faulty, unconstitutional reasoning not in accord with American tradition.
For all of us what want to see a more just, peaceful, and equal society – “equal” here meaning note a leveled kind of society in which everyone has the same stuff but, rather, a society in which every person has an equal chance to prosper, succeed and flourish.
While it may take you a bit of time going through parts of this well-reasoned and tightly argued book, I think you will find the result worthwhile.
What did I find most helpful or “useful” about his message?
For one thing, I believe this is a book that has something valuable to say to both those inclined to be conservative and those inclined more to the liberal side of things. This excerpt from his introduction does a great job of “setting the tone” for the bulk of the book that followed:
“...Our public law now oscillates restless and unhappily between two dominant approaches, progressivism and originalism, both of which distort the true nature of law and betray our own legal traditions. Against both camps, I argue for a view I will all call common good constitutionalism. On this view, the classical tradition should be explicitly recovered and adapted as the matrix within which American judges read our Constitution, our statutes, and our administrative law. The centerpiece of the classical legal tradition is that law should be seen as a reasoned ordering to the common good, the “art of goodness and fairness,” as the Roman jurist Ulpian put it – an act of purposive and reasoned rulership that promotes the good of law’s subjects as members of a flourishing political community, and ultimately as members of the community of peoples and nations. Accordingly, the master principle of our public law should be the classical principle that all officials have a duty, and corresponding authority, to promote the common good – albeit in a manner consistent with the requirements of their particular roles….” (P. 1)
I welcomed his strong criticism of originalism, the school of thought – or perhaps the school of interpretation – so favored by most of the members of the sitting Supreme Court who have all been heavily influenced and supported by the Federalist Society and their allies on the wealthy right.
“So-called ‘originalism,’” he notes, “…a product of the conservative legal movement’s particular political and rhetorical situation after World War II, is profoundly anachronistic, indeed counter-originalist. The classical law was deeply inscribed in our legal traditions well before the founding era…. All attempts to combine originalism with the classical view of law are ultimately incoherent, an attempt to mix oil and water.” (P. 2)
The Classical Tradition
“In the classical tradition, law is seen as – in Aquinas’ famous definition – an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by a public authority who has charge of the community. Law is seen as intrinsically reasoned and also purposive, ordered to the common good of the whole polity and that of mankind….
“…the classical tradition distinguishes…between two senses of “law,” lex and ius…. Lex is the enacted positive law, such as a statute. Ius is the overall body of law generally, including and subsuming lex but transcending it, and containing general principles of jurisprudence and legal justice…. In this tradition, “rights” very much exist, but they are not defined in the essentially individualist, autonomy-based, and libertarian fashion familiar today. Instead “rights” are corollaries of justice, which is the constant aim of giving every man his due. Ius is what is due to every person, and in that sense, but only this sense, includes rights….
“Today both progressives and originalists either deny the existence of the natural law altogether (the usual progressive view), or deny its relevant to law except in strictly historical terms, as a background belief potentially incorporated into the law laid down by the framers and ratifiers (the now-standard originalist view). Both camps therefore attempt, in different ways, to reduce all law to positive law adopted by officials; for them, all law is in this sense lex…. The classical vision of law as a rational ordering to the common good, embedded in a broader framework of legal principles, has merely been driven underground.” (P. 4)
The Common Good
“In brief, the common good is, for the purposes of the constitutional lawyer, the flourishing of a well-ordered political community. The common good is unitary and indivisible, not an aggregation of individual utilities. In its temporal aspect it represents the highest felicity or happiness of the whole political community, which is also the highest good of the individuals compromising that community.”
The “central goods at which constitutionalism should aim…include, in a famous trinity, peace, justice, and abundance, which I extrapolate to modern conditions to include various forms of health, safety, and economic security. I also elicit from the tradition the key principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.
“The largest point of the tradition is that public authority is both natural and legitimate – rather than intrinsically suspect…. Yet that authoritative rule is bounded and limited by the very condition that gives it legitimacy: that the ruling authority always act through reasoned ordinances conducing to the common good, to public rather than private interest.” (P. 7)
“In America, the classical tradition held that so long as determinations are made within the jurisdictional competence of public bodies, for legitimate ends, and on rational grounds, they are a matter for the public authority, not the courts. A strong legal principle of deference by courts to the determination of legislatures was part and parcel of our law from the beginning. One of my particular claims is that our small-c constitutional order developed over time to extend this principle to the institutional presidency and administrative tribunals. Today our constitution supports the legitimacy of broad delegations to the executive, shaped and constrained by principles of legality that ensure that the executive acts rationally in ways ordered to the common good.” (Pp. 12-13)
Conclusion
I found it encouraging that so much of Vermeule’s argument fit so well with that advanced in Anthony Annette’s fine book, Cathonomics: How Catholic Tradition Can Create a More Just Economy.
Annette, like Vermeule, places great emphasis on the long history and development of what the “common good” means and includes. Both books talk about a perspective that includes the whole rather than one that focuses on just a few. Whether the common good is being attained, both argue, can be assessed only by looking at whether or not the entire people are flourishing and prospering. If not, it is not the common good that is being pursued or embraced but, rather, that of the few. And these “few” are always the same: the wealthy and powerful.
Vermeuel’s point is that justices and courts using “reasoning” that effectively subverts legitimate legislative authority by undermining the common good, but advancing individual “rights” over the collective rights of the entire society is, in fact, faulty, unconstitutional reasoning not in accord with American tradition.
For all of us what want to see a more just, peaceful, and equal society – “equal” here meaning note a leveled kind of society in which everyone has the same stuff but, rather, a society in which every person has an equal chance to prosper, succeed and flourish.
While it may take you a bit of time going through parts of this well-reasoned and tightly argued book, I think you will find the result worthwhile.
September 24, 2022
Tough book if you’re not a lawyer. I do recommend it, however. If you’re excited by the project that goes by the name “New Right,” or “Postliberal” and you’ve done reading on the latter’s Substack of the same name, this book will continue your education in this realm. In the last year, I’ve read Ryszard Legutko, Patrick Deneen, and several other authors of this ilk. You’re in the right place if you are looking at “Common Good Constitutionalism” to see this project fleshed out jurisprudentially.
The problem is, again, as a non-lawyer, I found some (too much) of the analysis of juridical instantiations of the common good, or more often Vermuele’s critique of the lack thereof (of CGC), a bit dry. I’m not sure why I struggled with this text. Perhaps to my untrained legal eyes, it reads as though he’s repeating himself. I appreciated the rhetorical segues where upon he announces something to the effect of “enough of this theoretical discussion, let’s get down to seeing how these ideas are practically applied,” but then I felt sooner than I would have liked we went back to theoretical and historical analyses of legal permutations and contingencies over the last several hundred years only tangentially connected to his thesis. Or again, because I’m not well versed in the constitutional law in which he clearly is, I couldn’t process the points quickly enough to stay engaged or moving along at a good clip.
Vermuele is a good writer. Deneen, Pappin, Ahmari, Peckenold, Legutko--they're all very good stylists. They create excellent sentences. They read like men who know their topics well, have held their respective commitments longer than the last election style, and have the confidence of will and clarity of thought to unpack complex and knotty historical contingencies and problematics patiently for the uninitiated.
Vermuele’s central conceit that originalism and progressive constitutionalism are both fatally flawed is strong. He makes the point early in the book and makes it powerfully that the internal logic of each is incoherent. In lieu of either one of these projects he proposes the constitutional approach of the book’s title and grounds it in the historical precedents of classical Anglo law and classical law from antiquity.
This is a book which deserves and perhaps requires a second reading for the non-practitioner of law.
The problem is, again, as a non-lawyer, I found some (too much) of the analysis of juridical instantiations of the common good, or more often Vermuele’s critique of the lack thereof (of CGC), a bit dry. I’m not sure why I struggled with this text. Perhaps to my untrained legal eyes, it reads as though he’s repeating himself. I appreciated the rhetorical segues where upon he announces something to the effect of “enough of this theoretical discussion, let’s get down to seeing how these ideas are practically applied,” but then I felt sooner than I would have liked we went back to theoretical and historical analyses of legal permutations and contingencies over the last several hundred years only tangentially connected to his thesis. Or again, because I’m not well versed in the constitutional law in which he clearly is, I couldn’t process the points quickly enough to stay engaged or moving along at a good clip.
Vermuele is a good writer. Deneen, Pappin, Ahmari, Peckenold, Legutko--they're all very good stylists. They create excellent sentences. They read like men who know their topics well, have held their respective commitments longer than the last election style, and have the confidence of will and clarity of thought to unpack complex and knotty historical contingencies and problematics patiently for the uninitiated.
Vermuele’s central conceit that originalism and progressive constitutionalism are both fatally flawed is strong. He makes the point early in the book and makes it powerfully that the internal logic of each is incoherent. In lieu of either one of these projects he proposes the constitutional approach of the book’s title and grounds it in the historical precedents of classical Anglo law and classical law from antiquity.
This is a book which deserves and perhaps requires a second reading for the non-practitioner of law.
September 19, 2025
It's a good book, it spends a bit of time critiquing originalism, and a bit of time critiquing progressivism. Also articulates the concept of the common good, but the definition is never really applied in the cases. There is a bit of a disconnect when discussing cases, he asserts what the common good approach would find but the reader is left abit puzzled as to the relationship of his definition and the application to the cases.
Like for free speech he say that common good implies some speech should be prohibited, but he gives no indication as to how the definition 'that which does not decrease when shared' even applies to free speech. One is left with a bunch of pieces and unable to put them together.
Nevertheless the book is good as an explanation of what is wrong with the other positions. It just needs a more structured and logical approach to applying common good.
Like for free speech he say that common good implies some speech should be prohibited, but he gives no indication as to how the definition 'that which does not decrease when shared' even applies to free speech. One is left with a bunch of pieces and unable to put them together.
Nevertheless the book is good as an explanation of what is wrong with the other positions. It just needs a more structured and logical approach to applying common good.
January 20, 2023
Rarely is a book so persuasive that, when you finish it, you find the thesis completely obvious. Whatever you think of Vermuele, this book has undeniably shifted the landscape in the conservative legal movement.
July 9, 2025
Can’t say I really read this but half way through I realized this was really starting to be a waste of time. Not written with much rigor, very biased reading of history, glazes dworkin…. But is silent on finnis…. (I know that’s not the point of the book but it raises some suspiscion)
September 9, 2022
Full review coming later!
But to cut to the chase: just forthrightly use God's Law, and don't bother with this endlessly manipulable and indeterminate 'Common Good' stuff.
But to cut to the chase: just forthrightly use God's Law, and don't bother with this endlessly manipulable and indeterminate 'Common Good' stuff.
October 1, 2023
Fantastic text that lays the foundations for a great new order of interpretation.
October 29, 2023
An easy read with some enlightening parts, but I share the general consensus that this book was underwhelming.
November 8, 2023
All hat, no cattle.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews