Roosevelt on Tribe's Invisible Constitution

November 5th, 2009

Kermit Roosevelt III has posted an article titled  The Indivisible Constitution on SSRN reviewing Professor Tribe’s The Invisible constitution. (H/T Legal Theory Blog). Here is the abstract:

    In The Invisible Constitution, Laurence Tribe argues that many of our most deeply-held constitutional convictions are not to be found in the words of the Constitution itself. They are, instead, part of what he calls the invisible Constitution. This review essay argues that although that claim is true, it is not worth spending a book on. Moreover, its very truth-the fact that certain “invisible” constitutional propositions are as central and well-established as textual ones-undermines the value of treating the “invisible” Constitution as a qualitatively different entity.