Adrian Vermeule
Adrian Vermeule | |
---|---|
Born | Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule May 2, 1968 |
Title | Ralph S. Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law |
Spouse | Yun Soo Vermeule |
Parent(s) | Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III Emily Vermeule |
Academic background | |
Education | Harvard University (BA, JD) |
Influences | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Administrative law Constitutional law |
Institutions | |
Notable ideas | Common good constitutionalism |
Website | blogs |
Cornelius Adrian Comstock Vermeule (/vərˈmjuːl/,[3] born May 2, 1968) is an American legal scholar who is currently the Ralph S. Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. He is an expert on constitutional and administrative law, and, since 2016, has voiced support for Catholic integralism.[4] He has articulated this into his theory of common-good constitutionalism.
Life and career
Vermeule was born May 2, 1968.
He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Law School in 1998.[7] Vermeule became professor of law at Harvard Law School in 2006, was named John H. Watson Professor of Law in 2008, and was named Ralph S. Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law in 2016. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012 at the age of 43.
Vermeule's writings focus on constitutional law, administrative law, and the theory of institutional design. He has authored or co-authored nine books.[8] He teaches administrative law, legislation, and constitutional law.
In 2015, Vermeule co-founded the book review magazine The New Rambler.[9] Vermeule became a contributing editor to Compact in 2022.[10]
On July 24, 2020, Vermeule was appointed to the Administrative Conference of the United States.[11]
Legal and political philosophy
Integralism and support for Catholic world government
A convert to
Judicial interpretation
On judicial interpretation, Vermeule believes:
The central question is not "How, in principle, should a text be interpreted?" The question instead should be, "How should certain institutions, with their distinctive abilities and limitations, interpret certain texts?" My conclusions are that judges acting under uncertainty should strive, above all, to minimize the costs of mistaken decisions and the costs of decision making, and to maximize the predictability of their decisions.[7]
Vermeule is a judicial review skeptic. Jonathan Siegel has written that Vermeule's approach to the interpretation of law:
eschews, and attempts to transcend, the main elements of the long-standing debates over methods that courts should use to interpret statutes and the Constitution ... he sees no need to resolve apparently burning questions such as whether courts are bound by what legislatures write, or by what legislatures intend ... For Vermeule, everything comes down to a simple but withering cost–benefit analysis.[15]
In 2007, Vermeule said about the
Vermeule believes that legal change can only come about through cultural improvements. In an interview in 2016 after his conversion to Catholicism, Vermeule said,
I put little stock or faith in the law. It is a tool that may be put to good uses or bad. In the long run it will be no better than the polity and culture in which it is embedded. If that culture sours and curdles; so will the law; indeed that process is well underway and its tempo is accelerating. Our hope lies elsewhere.[6]
Common-good constitutionalism
In an article in
Vermeule's concept of common-good constitutionalism is:
based on the principles that government helps direct persons, associations, and society generally toward the common good, and that strong rule in the interest of attaining the common good is entirely legitimate. ... This approach should take as its starting point substantive moral principles that conduce to the common good, principles that officials (including, but by no means limited to, judges) should read into the majestic generalities and ambiguities of the written Constitution. These principles include respect for the authority of rule and of rulers; respect for the hierarchies needed for society to function; solidarity within and among families, social groups, and workers’ unions, trade associations, and professions; appropriate subsidiarity, or respect for the legitimate roles of public bodies and associations at all levels of government and society; and a candid willingness to "legislate morality –indeed, a recognition that all legislation is necessarily founded on some substantive conception of morality, and that the promotion of morality is a core and legitimate function of authority. Such principles promote the common good and make for a just and well-ordered society.[18]
Vermeule specified that common-good constitutionalism is "not tethered to particular written instruments of civil law or the will of the legislators who created them." However, the determination of the common good made by the legislators is instrumental insofar as it embodies the background principles of the natural law.[19] In other words, while the legislative intent is not per se controlling, positive law always seeks to put into effect natural law principles, and the intended principles behind the positive law are controlling. In that vein, he also says that "officials (including, but by no means limited to, judges)" will need "a candid willingness to 'legislate morality'" in order to create a "just and well-ordered society."[18]
The main aim of common-good constitutionalism:
is certainly not to maximize individual autonomy or to minimize the abuse of power (an incoherent goal in any event), but instead to ensure that the ruler has the power needed to rule well ... Just authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects’ own perceptions of what is best for them — perceptions that may change over time anyway, as the law teaches, habituates, and re-forms them. Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires for the individual and common goods, better habits, and beliefs that better track and promote communal well-being.[18]
Responses
Vermeule's common good constitutionalism has drawn a range of responses, both positive and negative. Legal scholar Richard H. Helmholz, in a review of Common Good Constitutionalism, described it as "a serious contribution to some of the most pressing legal debates of our times... Vermeule’s book has the merit of providing some of the details about how such a change might occur. It also includes some marching orders."[20] Jack Goldsmith has praised Common Good Constitutionalism as "the most important book of American constitutional theory in many decades".[21]
Legal scholar Conor Casey has criticized critics of common good constitutionalism as having fundamentally misunderstood it. According to Casey, common good constitutionalism "is entirely consistent with the natural law legal tradition and emphatically not an argument for authoritarianism unbound from legal and democratic constraint or concern for human rights."[22]
According to Eric Levitz, the values Vermeule promotes are those of
In a column in
Elliot Kaufman, writing in the conservative magazine
Peter J. Wallison, who served as White House Counsel during the Reagan presidency, described Vermeule's book as "more an embarrassment than a legal masterpiece" and that "the political structure he devises is highly authoritarian, perhaps even totalitarian." Wallison attacked Vermeule's ideas for "never successfully defines what he means by the common good or how it can be achieved" as well as failing to understand the distinction between textualism and originalism.[28]
Controversy
In February 2020, Vermeule compared attendees of a conservative conference to concentration camp detainees, calling them "The very first group for the camps."[29] The Harvard Crimson wrote at the time that, "The comment drew criticism from professors and Harvard alumni, who interpreted the line as a reference to Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust." UC Berkeley law professor Orin Kerr similarly responded by saying, "Bummed I wasn’t invited, but then my family hasn’t had good experiences in the camps."[29]
Personal life and views
Vermeule was raised as an
Raised a Protestant, despite all my thrashing and twisting, I eventually couldn't help but believe that the apostolic succession through Peter as the designated leader and primus inter pares is in some logical or theological sense prior to everything else – including even Scripture, whose formation was guided and completed by the apostles and their successors, themselves inspired by the Holy Spirit.[6]
Books
- Vermeule, Adrian (2006). Judging Under Uncertainty: An Institutional Theory of Legal Interpretation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
- Vermeule, Adrian; Posner, Eric (2007). Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Vermeule, Adrian (2009). Law and the Limits of Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Vermeule, Adrian; Posner, Eric (2010). The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Vermeule, Adrian (2011). The System of the Constitution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Vermeule, Adrian; ISBN 9780735587441.
- Vermeule, Adrian (2014). The Constitution of Risk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Sunstein, Cass R.; Vermeule, Adrian (2020). Law & Leviathan: Redeeming the Administrative State. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
- Vermeule, Adrian (February 2022). Common Good Constitutionalism: Recovering the Classical Legal Tradition. Medford, MA: ISBN 978-1509548873.
See also
References
- ^ "The Integralism of Adrian Vermeule". 5 October 2020.
- ^ "The Integralism of Adrian Vermeule". 5 October 2020.
- ^ Martin, Douglas (December 9, 2008) "Cornelius C. Vermeule III, a Curator of Classical Antiquities, Is Dead at 83", The New York Times. Retrieved September 8, 2012
- ^ "The Integralism of Adrian Vermeule". Commonweal Magazine. 5 October 2020. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-292-73376-3.
- ^ a b c d Teahan, Madeleine (October 28, 2016). "There is no middle way between atheism and Catholicism, says Harvard professor who is converting". Catholic Herald. Archived from the original on December 15, 2016. Retrieved October 28, 2016.
- ^ The University of Chicago Chronicle. Vol. 23, no. 18. Retrieved September 8, 2012.
- ^ "Adrian Vermeule". Harvard Law School. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
- ^ Kerr, Orin (March 3, 2015). "The New Rambler". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 24, 2016.
- ^ "Compact Magazine Makes a Strong Case for Liberalism". 28 March 2022.
- National Archives.
- ^ Peters, Nathaniel (April 11, 2018) "The Ultimate Catholic Showdown? Liberalism vs. Integralism at Harvard" Public Discourse
- ^ Vermeule, Adrian (March 16, 2018) "Ralliement: Two Distinctions" The Josias
- ^ Beauchamp, Zack (September 9, 2019) "The anti-liberal moment" Vox
- ^ Siegel, Jonathan R. (January 2008). "Judicial Interpretation in the Cost-Benefit Crucible" (PDF). Minnesota Law Review. 92. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota: 387–88. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-05-17. Retrieved 2011-12-27.
- ^ Shea, Christopher (October 7, 2007) "Supreme downsizing" The Boston Globe
- ^ a b c Levitz, Eric (April 2020) "No, Theocracy and Progressivism Aren’t Equally Authoritarian" New York
- ^ The Atlantic Monthly
- OCLC 1266642815.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ Helmholz, R. H. (May 2022). "Marching Orders". First Things.
- ^ "Common Good Constitutionalism". Polity.
- SSRN 3725068.
- The Atlantic Monthly
- The Atlantic Monthly
- Will, George F. (May 29. 2020) "When American conservatism becomes un-American" The Washington Post
- ^ Kaufman, Elliot (December 2017). "Editorship and the Art of Writing". National Review. Retrieved 1 April 2020.
- ^ Hills, Rick (May 11, 2018). "Adrian Vermeule's Anti-Liberal Chic?". Pawfsblawg. Retrieved April 1, 2020.
- ^ "Review: Common Good Constitutionalism". American Enterprise Institute - AEI. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
- ^ a b "Harvard Law School Professor Receives Backlash for Tweet About 'Camps' | News | The Harvard Crimson". www.thecrimson.com. Retrieved 2022-07-10.
- ^ Deardurff, Christina (October 2016) "Finding Stable Ground" (interview) Inside the Vatican