Public Justice and the End of Constitutional Law

Abstract This article argues that constitutional law is ordered not to the common good simpliciter , but to public justice. Although natural law theory has long identified the common good as the end of law, that concept is too indeterminate to capture the specific normative task of constitutional law in plural and differentiated political communities. By revisiting Aristotelian and Thomistic accounts of the common good and justice, the article argues that justice supplies determinate content to the political dimension of the common good. Drawing on federal and associational theories of political order, particularly the work of Johannes Althusius, it maintains that the state is neither the sole bearer nor the comprehensive administrator of the common good. Constitutional law is therefore best understood as ordered to public justice: the juridical task of allocating authority, securing what is due to individuals and their civil associations, and restraining public power within a constitutional framework.