Benjamin Constant and the making of modern liberalism

by Stephen Holmes

337 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Stephen Holmes is Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.

Holmes' research centers on the history of European liberalism, the disappointments of democracy and economic liberalization after communism, and the difficulty of combating international Salafi terrorism within the bounds of the Constitution and the rule of law. In 1988, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete a study of the theoretical foundations of liberal democracy. He was a member of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin during the 1991-92 academic year. He was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2003-2005 for his work on Russian legal reform. Besides numerous articles on the history of political thought, democratic and constitutional theory, state-building in post-communist Russia, and the war on terror, his publications include: Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (1984); Anatomy of Antiliberalism (1993); Passions and Constraint: The Theory of Liberal Democracy (1995); The Cost of Rights, coauthored, with Cass Sunstein (1998); and Matador’s Cape: America’s Reckless Response to Terror (2007).

After receiving his Ph.D. from Yale in 1976, Holmes (b. 1948) taught briefly at Yale and Wesleyan Universities before becoming a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1978. He next moved to Harvard University's Department of Government, where he stayed until 1985, the year he joined the faculty at the University of Chicago where he taught, in both the Political Science Department and the Law School, until 1997. From 1997-2000, Holmes was Professor of Politics at Princeton University. In 2000, he moved to New York University School of Law where he is currently Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and faculty co-director of the Center on Law and Security.

At the University of Chicago, Holmes was Director of the Center for the Study of Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe. At Chicago and NYU he also served and as editor-in-chief of the East European Constitutional Review (1993-2003). In addition, he has also been the Director of the Soros Foundation program for promoting legal reform in Russia and Eastern Europe (1994-96).