"Who but Handley Arkes could produce a page-turner on classic constitutional cases? Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths is just that - an intellectually thrilling hunt for truths about man, nature, and government encoded in decisions so familiar that we have lost awareness of their deepest meanings."---Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard University Law School
"With a rare combination of rigor and wit, Professor Arkes sheds new light on the principles animating Supreme Court cases long thought familiar. His penetrating analysis is a welcome challenge to understandings too often taken for granted in the academy and in the courts. This thought-provoking book will captivate anyone concerned about the legal and moral framework of our constitutional system."---Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit
"For more than a generation, Hadley Arkes has been America's most articulate and cogent defender of the limited, but important and indispensable, role of moral reasoning in constitutional adjudication. Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths is his best book yet, a fitting capstone to a most distinguished career. In this new work, Arkes explores with characteristic subtlety such leading Supreme Court cases as Lochner v. New York, Near v. Minnesota, and The Pentagon Papers Case. In each instance, he uncovers the scarcely acknowledged moral structure of the Court's decision, and subjects it to a critical analysis. But the main concern ofthe book is a characteristic feature of today's judicial conservatism, which Arkes rightly attributes to Justice Scalia and Robert Bork: that constitutional interpretation must steer clear of natural law, or unrestricted moral reasoning. Arkes argues forcefully that natural law has more to do with judicial review than these and other conservatives allow, though still less than most liberals claim that it does."---Gerard V. Bradley, University of Notre Dame Law School
"With considerable wit and charm, Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths seeks to challenge conventional wisdom as it invites the reader to puzzle anew about old constitutional questions. In his urbane manner, Hadley Arkes may be among the most gifted prose stylists writing today."---George Thomas, Claremont McKenna College
Arkes re-examines legal cases and concepts long thought settled, finding that their meaning is far less clear than commonly accepted.
This book stands against the current of judgments long settled in the schools of law in regard to classic cases such as Lochner v. New York, Near v. Minnesota, the Pentagon Papers case, and Bob Jones University v. United States. Professor Hadley Arkes takes as his subject concepts long regarded as familiar, settled principles in our law - "prior restraints," ex post facto laws - and he shows that there is actually a mystery about them, that their meaning is not as settled or clear as we have long supposed. Those mysteries have often given rise to illusions or at least a series of puzzles in our law. They have at times acted as a lens through which we view the landscape of the law. We often see what the lens has made us used to seeing, instead of seeing what is actually there. Arkes tries to show, in this text, that the logic of the natural law provides the key to this chain of puzzles.
