The classic legal tradition has seen a revival in recent years. There has been a jurisprudential turn amongst US- and European-based scholars to revive this tradition in mainstream academic discourse and to prise conservative legal thought away from classic liberalism, libertarianism, and arid positivism. A core part of this intellectual project has involved probing foundational questions about law and political authority: What is the purpose of law? What justifies law’s claims to authority? How should we conceive of the relationship between the precepts of natural law and posited law?
While these big foundational questions are critically important, also of paramount importance for this project to continue to flourish is answering second-order juridical questions about how the basic precepts of the classic legal tradition are best made concrete under contemporary social, economic and political conditions. While the classic legal tradition is emphatic that questions of institutional design within a polity are within the scope of reasonable determination—provided they are oriented toward the basic charge of upholding the common good—it is nonetheless worth asking if some arrangements may be particularly conducive to this task under current conditions.
This symposium hosts several scholars offering insight into how a legal order might best be ordered to secure the common good. Their remarks are adapted from presentations given at the International Society of Public Law Annual Conference on 9 July 2021.
The first piece, “Myths of Common-Good Constitutionalism” is by Adrian Vermeule and Conor Casey. Subsequent pieces include “Property and the Common Good—Reviving Old Debates” by Rachael Walsh, “Reclaiming the Natural Law for 21st Century Constitutionalism” by Xavier Foccroulle Ménard, “Rights and the Common Good” by Michael Foran, and “On the Tyranny of Rights” by Jamie McGowan.
