Jeffrey Toobin has an interesting and characteristically well-done, eight-page profile of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the March 11 issue of The New Yorker. It’s well worth reading because the major theme of the piece is Ginsburg’s Burkean jurisprudence. Those who think it's oxymoronic to classify someone as a Burkean liberal should check out Toobin's article; it persuasively demonstrates that no less a great liberal champion than Ruth Bader Ginsburg can, in fact, be a Burkean.
EDMUND BURKE
Edmund Burke -- the great eighteenth century British statesman -- was both a liberal and a conservative. For a relatively concise but complete profile of Burke, and an explanation of why by today's standards Burke may be considered either a liberal or a traditional conservative -- but emphatically not a libertarian, neoconservative, or social conservative -- read Professor Bogus' article Rescuing Burke, 72 Missouri Law Review 387 (2007).
Here are some quotes from Edmund Burke:
"We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation."
"Society become a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead, and those who are to be born."
"The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right."
"Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he a right to all which society, with all its combinations and skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things."
EDMUND is a blog by Professor Carl T. Bogus.