Can One be a Non-integralist Common Good Constitutionalist? Retrieving the Tradition from Adrian Vermeule

Abstract ‘Catholic integralism’ holds that the temporal authority of the state must be subordinated to the spiritual authority of the Catholic Church. In ‘All the Kingdoms of the World’, Kevin Vallier interrogates Adrian Vermeule as the principal strategist of a putative integralist political movement. Yet Vallier offers no assessment of Vermeule’s most important recent scholarly work, ‘Common Good Constitutionalism’ (CGC). Vallier reads CGC in the light of Vermeule’s popular integralist writing, reaching the conclusion that ‘common good constitutionalism leads to integralism’. This article argues three things. First, a close reading of CGC suggests that while common good constitutionalism is compatible with, even conducive to, integralism, it does not necessarily ‘lead to’ it. One can be a non-integralist common good constitutionalist. Second, Vermeule’s specific outworking of common good constitutionalism meets serious objections. Third, a suitably modified version of common good constitutionalism is not incompatible with what Vallier calls ‘institutional liberalism’.