The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution was signed in convention September 17, 1787 and ratified June 21, 1788.
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
It is commonly acknowledged that the Preamble “is a brief introductory statement of the Constitution’s fundamental purposes and guiding principles. Courts have referred to it as reliable evidence of the Framers’ intentions regarding the Constitution’s meaning and what they hoped the Constitution would achieve.”
And yet, constitutional theorists, lawyers and law professors, much of Congress, the Executive branch, and the Supreme Court have, by and large, not accorded sufficient recognition, legal deference and democratic realization to forming “a more perfect union,” “establish[ing] justice,” and “promot[ing] the general welfare,” at least in comparison with the deference paid to and preoccupation with “provid[ing] for the common defense” and “secur[ing] the blessings of liberty,” the last (especially of late) in a largely libertarian Liberal sense which grants social and economic supremacy to capitalist markets (hence the hypnotic and ideological focus on what are termed ‘negative liberties’). As for “insuring domestic tranquility” (this is related to the Rawlsian concern for social stability) the next few decades, if not years, should inform us to what extent that can be achieved within the boundaries of Liberal egalitarian rights and duties as well as democratic participation, deliberation and representation more broadly (that is, if the U.S. can salvage what is left of its constitutional commitments and democracy).
In brief, several of the “fundamental purposes and guiding principles” of the Constitution are deserving of far more attention, elaboration, and fulfillment by all three branches of government, as well as more citizens on the Right side of Mirabeau’s “geography of the Assembly,” many if not most of whom tend not to possess even a decent understanding of their own “self- interests,” let alone evidence a basic appreciation of common and public goods, equal liberties and rights, and the pursuit of justice in light of “the Good.” The term “the Good” is here open-ended and not beholden to any one particular metaphysical doctrine or moral theory, although it has aspirational or perfectibilist (distinguishable from ‘perfectionist’) and cosmopolitan connotations that assume if not cohere with something closely akin to or perhaps even identical with the Rawlsian ideas of “reasonable pluralism” and an “overlapping consensus” under the Liberal constitutional conditions of “democratic law.” Thus one might call it a “thin” theory or model of “the Good,” the “thick” conceptions being peculiar to individual worldviews. Accordingly and ideally, it should be able to capture the particular “truths” or vantage points, or the conceptions of “public reason” peculiar to three distinct Liberal constitutional models or frameworks: libertarian, egalitarian, and communitarian. After Alan Brudner, the “model” or best theory of the Liberal-democratic constitution is one that, by way of critique, subsumes and transcends each model or framework while incorporating aspects of their fundamental principles and values as constituent components of a whole that is sensitive to the pursuit of justice through the means and ends, principles and purposes, provided by Liberalism and democratic law. Being on the Left, I cannot help but point out that this Liberalism in the widest and deepest sense is perfectly consistent with (although not necessarily circumscribed by) ideas of democratic or Liberal socialism as found in the writings of J.S. Mill, John Dewey, and John Rawls, and to some extent, B.R. Ambedkar. And it is, I would argue, consistent with Marx’s vision of a post-capitalist democratic and socialist society.*
* I wholeheartedly agree with the arguments of R.G. Peffer that, in spite of his well-known “anti-moralism” and tendency on occasion to conflate morality and ideology, Marx nevertheless held firmly to (an often implicit) normative moral theory that was part and parcel of his social scientific theory. Please see Peffer’s Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (Princeton University Press, 1990).
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