OxBlog

Monday, October 31, 2005

# Posted 8:31 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

WHAT IS "ACTIVE LIBERTY"? According to a profile of Stephen Breyer in this week's New Yorker, it is the good Justice's "manifesto for a progressive revival on the Supreme Court". It is a doctrine that hopes to provides progressives with the same intellectual heft as the originalism of legal conservatives.

So what is "active liberty"? Heck if I know. Jeffrey Toobin, author of the Breyer profile, suggests that the doctrine itself may not have a solid core. Nonetheless, Toobin is clearly smitten with Breyer, whom he celebrates for sharing the ultimate liberal character flaw: being too good and kind to recognize that Republicans aren't.

I'm guessing Toobin's right that Breyer really is quite a mensch. Thus, I just might be willing to give his book on active liberty a chance. Mercifully, Breyer has avoided the penultimate liberal character of excess verbosity. His book is just 176 pages long.
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