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Common Good Constitutionalism vs. America’s Enlightenment Civil Religion

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Morgan J.

Studia Gilsoniana

2022

vol. 11

issue 4

673-734

In his 2022 volume Common Good Constitutionalism, and in a series of essays and other works prior to the book’s release, Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule advances a new vision for the American republic. Against the two dominant strains of constitutional interpretation in the United States, namely originalism and progressivism (“living constitutionalism”), Vermeule argues for common good constitutionalism, a return to the ius commune pursuit of that which is good for all in accordance with the natural law. While Vermeule’s work is ambitious and his intervention into originalist-progressivist debates welcome, a question remains: will common good constitutionalism be able to overcome America’s Enlightenment civil religion? In this paper, I consider the challenges which America’s Enlightenment civil religion poses to common good constitutionalism (and any other attempt to think past the Constitution from within a constitutional framework), concluding that common good constitutionalism, insofar as it is predicated on the pre-existing Constitution and deployed within the American politico-theological domain, cannot overcome America’s Enlightenment civil religion to effect the common good.

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Common Good Constitutionalism vs. America’s Enlightenment Civil Religion