Adrian Vermeule s legal theories illuminate a growing rift among US conservatives | Financial Times
Adrian Vermeule wired up the explosive but didn t stick around to watch it go off.
A Harvard law professor and conservative scholar, Vermeule had been working on a new legal philosophy for years when the Atlantic magazine asked him to write about it in March 2020. Known in academia for his provocative commentary, Vermeule let loose, declaring that the dominant conservative legal theory in the US had outlived its utility .
Originalism, the theory arguing that the US constitution should be interpreted in the light of its original intended meaning, had united social conservatives and free-market libertarians for 40 years. It was as simple for average voters to understand as it was effective at poking holes in liberal reasoning. And it was instrumental in notching up a string of legal victories at all levels of American jurisprudence. But here was a legal light arguing forcefully that it was time for something better. Vermeule proposed an alternative called common good constitutionalism and argued conservatives should focus less on limiting government and more on ensuring it has the power to rule well .
Vermeule filed his essay, and then the recent Catholic convert gave up social media for Lent.
While he was on hiatus, law Twitter blew up. Critics on the left dubbed him a fascist and an authoritarian flirting with bargain-basement theocracy . One suggested he might ve gone stir crazy during the early days of lockdown. On the right, establishment lawyers attacked Vermeule as an apostate, a traitor, a fraud. William Pryor, a potential Supreme Court nominee, has since given three speeches and written two articles castigating Vermeule as absurd and wrong , charging that he relies on invented history .
The debate quickly took on a life of its own. A crowd of young social conservatives rallied around Vermeule, starting a website to discuss his work, at the same time as old-line conservative publications and leading originalist scholars made him a target. The death of originalism has been a more-or-less permanent topic of discussion at rightwing think-tanks and universities ever since.
via www.ft.com
I’ve been skeptical of AV ever since he blocked me on twitter for a perfectly innocuous joke. Personally, I don’t trust anyone who thinks the central government just needs a lot more power to make sure anyone with the least authority, including that to just run their own life, is thinking properly. I OTOH think you just have to do the hard work of *convincing* free people that you’re right. If you can’t, well, that’s their loss. And you probably have to leave California.
Therefore I suggest AV’s philosophy not be called “common good” constitutionalism, but “I’m right” constitutionalism. No doubt AV is right about most things. He’s a Catholic after all, a convert. So this is just in case he’s not, right that is. One of the doctrines of Catholicism is that you’re ultimately responsible for your own soul. So there’s that.