The Communitarian Constitution. By Beau Breslin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 288p. $48.00.

Beau Breslin desires to make a breakthrough in the “communitarian-liberal debate” by moving it to the plane of constitutional discourse (pp. 18–19, 109). He describes his study as a work of constitutional theory, but of a generic sort; his constitutionalist standard owes more to John Rawls than to James Madison. “Constitutionalism” refers varyingly to an architectonic vision of political perfection (or “modeling”) and to the limits on political power. The communitarian constitution is caught in a dilemma that arises from these conflicting imperatives.