Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2013
ISSN
0006-8047
Publisher
Boston University School of Law
Language
en-US
Abstract
I am truly delighted that Boston University School of Law is hosting a conference on Abner Greene’s Against Obligation1 and Michael Seidman’s On Constitutional Disobedience. 2 Both books launch powerful and much-needed broadsides against the idea of a political obligation to obey the U.S. Constitution, and more generally (whether or not the authors embrace these implications) against the very idea of a political obligation to obey state authorities. I fully agree with both authors that the arguments normally made in favor of a duty of obedience to the Constitution, and by extension to state authorities of any kind, are remarkably – and one might even say transparently – weak.3 I rather suspect that everyone knows this but prefers not to talk about it too much in polite company.
Recommended Citation
Gary S. Lawson,
Originalism Without Obligation
,
in
93
Boston University Law Review
1309
(2013).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/708
