The book club of the Democrats of Rossmoor will discuss the new book Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, not Textualism, by Justice Stephen Breyer, at 2:00pm on Monday, November 4, 2024, in Multi-Purpose Room 2.
Breyer, a native of San Francisco and a graduate of Lowell High School and Stanford Graduate, is now a law professor at Harvard Law.
Of the book the publisher writes: “The relatively new judicial philosophy of textualism dominates the Supreme Court. Textualists claim that the right way to interpret the Constitution and statutes is to read the text carefully and examine the language as it was understood at the time the documents were written.
This, however, is not Justice Breyer’s philosophy nor has it been the traditional way to interpret the Constitution since the time of Chief Justice John Marshall. Justice Breyer recalls Marshall’s exhortation that the Constitution must be a workable set of principles to be interpreted by subsequent generations.
Most important in interpreting law, says Breyer, is to understand the purposes of statutes as well as the consequences of deciding a case one way or another. He illustrates these principles by examining some of the most important cases in the nation’s history, among them the Dobbs and Bruen decisions from 2022 that he argues were wrongly decided and have led to harmful results. f
The Kindle edition of the book costs $14, the hardcover costs $23.65 from Amazon.
Membership is not required to attend the book discussions.
For more information or to join the club go to www.DemocratsofRossmoor.org