Best Jurisprudence

In fact, such judicial discretion might lead to the destruction of the Bill of Rights if a majority of the judges ever wished to reach that most undesirable of goals. This essay is followed by four commentaries by Professors Gordon Wood, Laurence Tribe, Mary Ann Glendon, and Ronald Dworkin, who engage Justice Scalia's ideas about judicial interpretation from varying standpoints. He applies this principle to constitutional law, arguing that we should concentrate on the Constitution's original meaning. To reduce a complex and subtle argument to a sentence, he believes that judges should discern a law's import from the words in which it is stated, not from divining the legislative intent behind its passage or interpreting the text through analysis of its historical context; he finds the application of common-law adjudicature to constitutional issues a threat to democracy. Glendon's Harvard Law School colleague Laurence Tribe lauds Scalia's insistence on a close reading of statutory texts but contends that specific constitutional language must be studied ``in light of the Constitution as a whole and the history of its interpretation''; he doubts that any set of ``rules'' for constitutional exegesis is possible. Ronald Dworkin, of New York University Law School, finds textualism inadequate for constitutional analysis because ``key constitutional provisions, as a matter of their original meaning, set out abstract principles rather than concrete or dated rules.''.

Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? A few years ago, while I was researching a book on the history of globalization, I suddenly realized that I was seeing the same two names on a lot of the smartest stuff I was reading. “For economics and political-science students, surely, but also for the general reader who will appreciate how gracefully the authors wear their erudition.” — Kirkus Reviews “Provocative stuff; backed by lots of brain power.” — Library Journal “This is an intellectually rich book that develops an important thesis with verve. large and ambitious new book.” — The Daily “ Why Nations Fail is a splendid piece of scholarship and a showcase of economic rigor.” —The Wall Street Journal "Ranging from imperial Rome to modern Botswana, this book will change the way people think about the wealth and poverty of nations...as ambitious as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel ." “The main strength of this book is beyond the power of summary: it is packed, from beginning to end, with historical vignettes that are both erudite and fascinating. But it will also make you think.” —The Observer (UK) "A brilliant book.” — Bloomberg ( Jonathan Alter) “ Why Nations Fail is a wildly ambitious work that hopscotches through history and around the world to answer the very big question of why some countries get rich and others don’t.” — The New York Times (Chrystia Freeland). Acemoglu and Robinson tackle one of the most important problems in the social sciences—a question that has bedeviled leading thinkers for centuries—and offer an answer that is brilliant in its simplicity and power. —Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the bestsellers Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse "A compelling and highly readable book. And [the] conclusion is a cheering one: the authoritarian ‘extractive’ institutions like the ones that drive growth in China today are bound to run out of steam. Without the inclusive institutions that first evolved in the West, sustainable growth is impossible, because only a truly free society can foster genuine innovation and the creative destruction that is its corollary." “Imagine sitting around a table listening to Jared Diamond, Joseph Schumpeter, and James Madison reflect on over two thousand years of political and economic history. Imagine that they weave their ideas into a coherent theoretical framework based on limiting extraction, promoting creative destruction, and creating strong political institutions that share power and you begin to see the contribution of this brilliant and engagingly written book.” —Scott E. Page, University of Michigan and Santa Fre Institute. “This fascinating and readable book centers on the complex joint evolution of political and economic institutions, in good directions and bad. It strikes a delicate balance between the logic of political and economic behavior and the shifts in direction created by contingent historical events, large and small at ‘critical junctures.'. From the absolutism of the Stuarts to the antebellum South, from Sierra Leone to Colombia, this magisterial work shows how powerful elites rig the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of the many. But they also document how sensible economic ideas and policies often achieve little in the absence of fundamental political change.” —Dani Rodrik, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Powerful people always and everywhere seek to grab complete control over government, undermining broader social progress for their own greed. Through a broad multiplicity of historical examples, they show how institutional developments, sometimes based on very accidental circumstances, have had enormous consequences. The openness of a society, its willingness to permit creative destruction, and the rule of appear to be decisive for economic development.” —Kenneth Arrow, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 1972 “Acemoglu and Robinson—two of the world's leading experts on development—reveal why it is not geography, disease, or culture which explains why some nations are rich and some poor, but rather a matter of institutions and politics. This highly accessible book provides welcome insight to specialists and general readers alike.” —Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man and The Origins of Political Order. This book is a must read at a moment where governments right across the western world must come up with the political will to deal with a debt crisis of unusual proportions.” —Steve Pincus, Bradford Durfee Professor of History and International and Area Studies, Yale University “The authors convincingly show that countries escape poverty only when they have appropriate economic institutions, especially private property and competition. The highly original research that Professors Acemoglu and Robinson have done, and continue to do, on how economic forces, politics and policy choices evolve together and constrain each other, and how institutions affect that evolution, is essential to understanding the successes and failures of societies and nations. "In this delightfully readable romp through 400 years of history, two of the giants of contemporary social science bring us an inspiring and important message: it is freedom that makes the world rich.