Storm Over the Constitution

by Harry V. Jaffa

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.'

Genres: Politics, Law

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

A graduate of Yale University, Harry Victor Jaffa taught at Queens College, the City College of New York and at the University of Chicago before earning his doctorate in 1951 at the New School for Social Research in New York. A student of Leo Strauss, Jaffa taught at Ohio State University from 1951-64, and over the next 25 years was on the faculties of Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, Calif. He was the Henry Salvatori research professor of political philosophy from 1971-89, when he became professor emeritus and a distinguished fellow at the Claremont Institute.