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Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution - Kentucky Scholarship Online
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Reflections on Life, Death, and the Constitution

George Anastaplo

Abstract

The role of law in government has been increasingly scrutinized as courts struggle with controversial topics such as assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, and torture. This book explores such issues by using classical standards of morality as a starting point for understanding them. Drawing on works of literature and philosophy, and on U.S. Supreme Court decisions, the book examines the intimate relationship between human nature and constitutional law.

Keywords: law, government, assisted suicide, euthanasia, abortion, capital punishment, torture, human nature, constitutional law, U.S. Supreme Court

Bibliographic Information

Print publication date: 2009 Print ISBN-13: 9780813125336
Published to Kentucky Scholarship Online: September 2011 DOI:10.5810/kentucky/9780813125336.001.0001

Authors

Affiliations are at time of print publication.

George Anastaplo, author

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Contents

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Front Matter

Title Pages

Other Books by George Anastaplo

Dedication

Preface

Part One

1. On Understanding the Others

2. Life and Not-Life in Thucydides’ Funeral Oration

3. Death and Resurrection in Euripides’ Bacchae

4. Resurrection and Death in Everyman

5. John Milton and the Limits of the Garden of Eden

6. Human Mortality and the Declaration of Independence

7. Time and the Constitution

8. Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the Modern Project

9. Public Health and Private Consciences

10. The Flag Salute Cases (1940, 1943)

11. Conscientious Objectors and Military Conscription

12. Obliteration Bombing, Civilian Casualties, and the Laws of War

13. Do All Somehow Aim at the Good?

Part Two

1. Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the Elusiveness of the Good

2. Unconventional Religious Duties and the Good Life

3. Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and the Prevention of Conception

4. Roe v. Wade (1973) and the Law of Abortion

5 Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) and the Persistence of the Abortion Issue

6. Capital Punishment and the United States Supreme Court

7. Capital Punishment Reconsidered

8 Nancy Cruzan and “The Right to Die”

9. Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) and Assisted Suicide

10 The Legislation of Morality and the Problem of Pain

11. Evolution and the Law

12. Life and Death in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

13. The Unseemly Fearfulness of Our Time

End Matter

Appendix A The Declaration of Independence (1776) 

Appendix B The United States Constitution (1787) 

Appendix C The Amendments to the United States Constitution (1791–1992) 

Appendix D Pericles, The Funeral Address (431 B.C.E.) 

Appendix EOn Death and Dying: Ancient, Christian, and Modern

Appendix F Patrick Henry, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death (1775) 

Appendix G Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (1863) 

Appendix H George Anastaplo, on the Ultron and the Foundations of Things (1974) 

Appendix I Life, Death, and the Systematic Perversions of Law (2000) 

Appendix J Cases and Other Materials Drawn On

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Index

About the Author