Todd St. John This week in The New York Times Book Review, Robert P. George reviews “America's Unwritten Constitution.†Mr. George writes:
In “America's Unwritten Constitution,†Akhil Reed Amar, a commendably unorthodox and, in some ways, iconoclastic constitutional scholar at Yale Law School, bucks dominant opinions on both sides of the political spectrum. He contends that the written Constitution points to an unwritten one, and he argues that we can interpret with both intellectual honesty and analytical rigor. Aware that the idea of an unwritten constitution has been abused by judges and scholars on both the left and right, Amar insists that the idea itself is sound - indeed indispensable to the cause of constitutional fidelity - and needs rescuing from its abusers.
This week, Mr. George discusses “America's Unwritten Constitutionâ€; Leslie Kaufman has notes from the field; Jonathan Mahler talks about the fate of Detroit; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.
