BOOK: Inken VON BORZYSKOWSKI, Benno GAMMERL, Jakob ZOLLMANN (eds.), Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Citizenship: Historical Contestations. Essays by Dieter Gosewinkel (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2025), 318 p., ISBN 978-3-7560-2445-2

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Dieter Gosewinkel verbindet juristisches Fachwissen mit historischer Analyse und untersucht liberale, konservative und sozialdemokratische Denkschulen. Sein Werk eröffnet neue Perspektiven auf zentrale Akteure, Debatten über Eigentum, Staatsbürgerschaft und den Konstitutionalismus. Die von ihm präsentierten Sozialgeschichten reichen über die Grenzen des Rechts hinaus und lassen Stimmen der Vergangenheit lebendig werden. So zeigt sich, wie Entwicklungen anders hätten verlaufen können. Die erstmals auf Englisch zugänglichen Texte fördern ein multiperspektivisches Gespräch zwischen liberal-demokratischen Positionen der Gegenwart.

Find more here.

BOOK: Adrian HÄUSLER, Droit romain et romanité dans la pensée traditionnelle : le comte Joseph de Maistre (Schulthess VErlag, 2019), 90 p. ISBN 978-3-7255-8736-0, 38 CHF

(image source: univ-droit)

Book abstract:

L’auteur se penche sur la pensée du comte de Maistre sous l’angle de la romanité, comme tradition juridique, politique et religieuse. Le comte propose une lecture originale de l’idée romaine, dont l’importance ne se limite pas à la diversité du discours idéologique de l’après-Révolution. L’argumentation de ses théories juridico-politiques, illustrées par un rappel de l’exemple romain et de l’importance du fait religieux pour sa constitution, ainsi que ses commentaires - visant à réfuter le discours révolutionnaire - sur la Rome royale, républicaine, impériale et papale, puis sur la continuité impériale par les formes romaines du Sacerdoce et de l’Empire (notamment en Russie), apportent également un éclairage nouveau sur la valeur du droit romain et la pérennité de l’idée romaine. Le chapitre, peu mis en avant, de la réception de la romanité dans la pensée contre-révolutionnaire trouve ici une tribune avec l’examen de l’œuvre du comte Joseph de Maistre.

(source: univ-droit)

 

BOOK: "Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution", by Amanda Hollis-Brusky (January 2015)

Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution, by Amanda Hollis-Brusky, Oxford University Press (January 2015)

All information here

There are few intellectual movements in modern American political history more successful than the Federalist Society. Created in 1982 to counterbalance what its founders considered a liberal legal establishment, the organization gradually evolved into the conservative legal establishment, and membership is all but required for any conservative lawyer who hopes to enter politics or the judiciary. It claims 40,000 members, including four Supreme Court Justices, dozens of federal judges, and every Republican attorney general since its inception. But its power goes even deeper.

In Ideas with Consequences, Amanda Hollis-Brusky provides the first comprehensive account of how the Federalist Society exerts its influence. Drawing from a huge trove of documents, transcripts, and interviews, she explains how the Federalist Society managed to revolutionize the jurisprudence for a wide variety of important legal issues. Many of these issues-including the extent of federal government power, the scope of the right to bear arms, and the parameters of corporate political speech-had long been considered settled. But the Federalist Society was able to upend the existing conventional wisdom, promoting constitutional theories that had previously been dismissed as ludicrously radical. As Hollis-Brusky shows, the Federalist Society provided several of the crucial ingredients needed to accomplish this constitutional revolution. It serves as a credentialing institution for conservative lawyers and judges and legitimizes novel interpretations of the constitution that employ a conservative framework. It also provides a judicial audience of like-minded peers, which prevents the well-documented phenomenon of conservative judges turning moderate after years on the bench. As a consequence, it is able to exercise enormous influence on important cases at every level.

A far-reaching analysis of some of the most controversial political and legal issues of our time, Ideas with Consequences is the essential guide to the Federalist Society at a time when its power has broader implications than ever.