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Isaiah Berlin and Enlightenment Constitutionalism
Lawyers and Game of Thrones
Nelson Mandela: The Lawyer's Lawyer

Isaiah Berlin and Enlightenment Constitutionalism

Posted: 02 Apr 2014 08:47 AM PDT

Jeremy Waldron, New York University School of Law; University of Oxford, has published Isaiah Berlin's Neglect of Enlightenment Constitutionalism. Here is the abstract.

One of the most important achievements of the Enlightenment is what I shall call Enlightenment constitutionalism. It transformed our political thinking out of all recognition; it left, as its legacy, not just the repudiation of monarchy and nobility in France in the 1790s but the unprecedented achievement of the framing, ratification, and establishment of the Constitution of the United States. It comprised the work of Diderot, Kant, Locke, Madison, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Sieyes, and Voltaire. It established the idea of a constitution as an intricate mechanism designed to house the untidiness and pluralism of human politics.

Yet Isaiah Berlin, supposedly one of our greatest interpreters of the Enlightenment, said almost nothing about it. The paper develops this claim and it speculates as to why this might be so. Certainly one result of Berlin's sidelining of Enlightenment constitutionalism is to lend spurious credibility to his well-known claim that Enlightenment social design was perfectionist, monastic, and potentially totalitarian.

On December 5, 2013, a preeminently honorable man, perhaps the most admired in the world, passed away. That man was Nelson Mandela, and he was a lawyer.
Mandela's surpassing prominence came not from writing a groundbreaking law review article, or from dazzling court watchers with a brilliant closing argument in a high profile trial (save the historic "speech from the dock" that he gave at his own). Mandela's singular gift to civilization – his inspiration and leadership of South Africa's peaceful transition from Apartheid rule to multi-racial, constitutional democracy – will not be known by most people as the provision of a "legal service." Indeed, relatively few among the millions who revere Mandela will perceive the formidable legal mind at work behind his history-making achievements. But as much as anything, it was Mandela's mastery of the lawyer's art that enabled him to build a case that changed the world.

Mandela was a lawyer's lawyer. And his story is a lesson to all that living the lawyer's life, at its best, engenders the skills and character traits that can empower people to make a difference in their community, their nation, and beyond.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.