Property and the Pursuit of Happiness

Locke, the Declaration of Independence, Madison, and the Challenge of the Administrative State

Inbunden, Engelska, 2019

739 kr

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In this book, Edward Erler brings a lifetime of study of political philosophy, the American founding, and the US constitution to the central role of property in American constitutional thought. Erler argues that the Founders considered the natural right to property as the comprehensive right that included every other right. In this sense they followed political philosopher John Locke, but at the same time made significant improvements on Locke, making it moral and political, something they called the “pursuit of happiness.”In the past century, this understanding of the right to property—derived from the principles of the Declaration of Independence—has been challenged by the rise of progressivism, which places promoting community welfare above the protection of individual rights as the central role of government. This has led to the administrative state’s unrelenting attacks on the right to private property, which have effectively ended the right to property as it was understood by the founders. Property and the Pursuit of Happiness offers a learned and wide-ranging discussion of the values at the core of America’s founding that will be of interest to all readers seeking to understand the founders’ vision and the profound challenges to it today.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2019-07-26
Mått161 x 235 x 25 mm
Vikt522 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor248
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781538130865

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Edward J. Erler is Professor of Political Science emeritus at California State University, San Bernardino, and is a senior fellow of The Claremont Institute. He is the author of The American Polity: Essays on the Theory and Practice of Constitutional Government, co-author of The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration, and has published numerous articles in law reviews and professional journals. Among his most recent articles are “The Decline and Fall of the Right to Property: Government as Universal Landlord;” and “The Second Amendment as a Reflection of First Principles;” he has also published several articles in the Encyclopedia of the American Constitution. Dr. Erler was a member of the California Advisory Commission on Civil Rights from 1988-2006 and served on the California Constitutional Revision Commission in 1996. He has testified before the House and Senate Judiciary Committee on birthright citizenship, voting rights and other civil rights issues.

For the past forty years, Professor Edward Erler, has produced some of the finest legal commentary on constitutional law. He remains, perhaps, the most original, insightful, and provocative scholar of the American Constitution. His new book, Property and the Pursuit of Happiness; Locke, The Declaration of Independence, Madison and the Challenge of the Administrative State, shows why this is so. His insight into the Constitution is informed not merely by an understanding of the law, the judiciary, or the Constitution, but by an understanding of the theoretical and political conditions required in the defense of freedom and self-government. In elaborating the importance of property, as essential to the protection of rights, he reveals the absolute necessity of limited government constitutionalism as indispensable for the preservation of both.