Ordered Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Virtues
James E. Fleming and Linda C. McClain, Ordered Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Virtues, Harvard University Press, 2013
Boston Univ. School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 13-19
Posted: 26 May 2013
Date Written: May 24, 2013
Abstract
Many have argued in recent years that the U.S. constitutional system exalts individual rights over responsibilities, virtues, and the common good. Answering the charges against liberal theories of rights, Ordered Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Virtues develops and defends a civic liberalism that takes responsibilities and virtues — as well as rights — seriously. It provides an account of ordered liberty that protects basic liberties stringently, but not absolutely, and permits government to encourage responsibility and inculcate civic virtues without sacrificing personal autonomy to collective determination. This account of civic liberalism explains and defends the principles, policies, and institutions designed to form responsible citizens. The book uses the battle over access to marriage by same-sex couples as one of many current controversies to defend an understanding of the relationship among rights, responsibilities, and virtues. Against accusations that same-sex marriage severs the rights of marriage from responsible sexuality, procreation, and parenthood, the book argues that same-sex couples seek the same rights, responsibilities, and goods of civil marriage that opposite-sex couples pursue. Securing their right to marry respects individual autonomy while also promoting moral goods and virtues. Other issues to which the book applies the authors’ idea of civic liberalism include reproductive freedom, the proper roles and regulation of civil society and the family, the education of children, and clashes between First Amendment freedoms (of association and religion) and antidiscrimination law. Articulating common ground between liberalism and its critics, Ordered Liberty moves beyond old debates about rights and develops an account of responsibilities and virtues that appreciates the value of diversity in our morally pluralistic constitutional democracy.
Keywords: constitutional theory, liberalism, political liberalism, rights, virtues, civic virtues, equality, liberty, marriage, education, family, andiscrimination law, reproductive freedom, civil society
JEL Classification: K19, K39, K49
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation