scholarly journals "We the People": John Locke, Collective Constitutional Rights, and Standing to Challenge Government Action

1985 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald L. Doernberg
Keyword(s):  
John Locke ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Government Action ◽  
The People ◽  
We The People

From Property Rights to Liberty Rights: We the Corporations, A Review Essay

2021 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-340
Author(s):  
Laura Phillips Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
State Action ◽  
Unequal Treatment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
We The People

A long-standing, and deeply controversial, question in constitutional law is whether or not the Constitution's protections for “persons” and “people” extend to corporations. Law professor Adam Winkler's We the Corporations chronicles the most important legal battles launched by corporations to “win their constitutional rights,” by which he means both civil rights against discriminatory state action and civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution (p. xvii). Today, we think of the former as the right to be free from unequal treatment, often protected by statutory laws, and the latter as liberties that affect the ability to live one's life fully, such as the freedom of religion, speech, or association. The vim in Winkler's argument is that the court blurred this distinction when it applied liberty rights to nonprofit corporations and then, through a series of twentieth-century rulings, corporations were able to advance greater claims to liberty rights. Ultimately, those liberty rights have been employed to strike down significant bipartisan regulations, such as campaign finance laws, which were intended to advance democratic participation in the political process. At its core, this book asks, to what extent do “we the people” rule corporations and to what extent do they rule us?

Making We the People

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaihark Hahm ◽  
Sung Ho Kim
Keyword(s):  
The People ◽  
We The People

We the People

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Dahlin
Keyword(s):  
The People ◽  
We The People

“We the People”

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Lee Teten
Keyword(s):  
The People ◽  
We The People

We the People

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 616-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jojanneke van der Toorn ◽  
Jaime L. Napier ◽  
John F. Dovidio
Keyword(s):  
The People ◽  
We The People

Natural Law Republicanism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Hawley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The People ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

By any metric, Cicero’s works are some of the most widely read in the history of Western thought. This book suggests that perhaps Cicero’s most lasting and significant contribution to philosophy lies in helping to inspire the development of liberalism. Individual rights, the protection of private property, and political legitimacy based on the consent of the governed are often taken to be among early modern liberalism’s unique innovations and part of its rebellion against classical thought. However, this book demonstrates that Cicero’s thought played a central role in shaping and inspiring the liberal republican project. Cicero argued that liberty for individuals could arise only in a res publica in which the claims of the people to be sovereign were somehow united with a commitment to universal moral law, which limits what the people can rightfully do. Figures such as Hugo Grotius, John Locke, and John Adams sought to work through the tensions in Cicero’s vision, laying the groundwork for a theory of politics in which the freedom of the individual and the people’s collective right to rule were mediated by natural law. This book traces the development of this intellectual tradition from Cicero’s original articulation through the American founding. It concludes by exploring how modern political ideas remain dependent on the conception of just politics first elaborated by Rome’s great philosopher-statesman.

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