EBOOK Cosmic Constitutional Theory:Why Americans Are Losing Their Inalienable Right to Self-Governan

American constitutional law has undergone a transformation. Issues once left to        the people have increasingly become the province of the courts. Subjects as diverse        as abortion rights and firearms regulations, health care reform and counterterrorism        efforts, not to mention a millennial presidential election, are more and more the        domain of judges.What sparked this development? In this engaging volume, Judge J.          Harvie Wilkinson argues that America's most brilliant legal minds have launched a        set of cosmic constitutional theories that, for all their value, are undermining        self-governance. Thinkers as diverse as Justices William Brennan and Antonin Scalia,        Professor John Hart Ely, Judges Robert Bork and Richard Posner, have all produced        seminal interpretations of our Founding document, but ones that promise to imbue        courts with unprecedented powers. While crediting the theorists for the sparkling        quality of their thoughts, Judge Wilkinson argues they will slowly erode the role of        representative institutions in America and leave our children bereft of democratic        liberty.The loser in all the theoretical fireworks is the old and honorable        tradition of judicial restraint. The judicial modesty once practiced by Learned        Hand, John Harlan, and Oliver Wendell Holmes has given way to competing schools of        liberal and conservative activism seeking sanctuary in Living Constitutionalism,        Originalism, Process Theory, or the supposedly anti-theoretical creed of Pragmatism.          Each of these seemingly disparate theories promises their followers an        intellectually respectable route to congenial political outcomes from the bench.          Judge Wilkinson calls for a plainer, simpler, self-disciplined commitment to        judicial restraint and democratic governance, a course that alas may be impossible        so long as the cosmic constitutionalists so dominate contemporary legal        thought.