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Lief Hastings Carter (born October 9, 1940) is an American political scientist. He specializes in constitutional interpretation and, more generally, the field of legal reasoning. His work explains why politically appealing ideas about interpreting laws rest on false premises. Neither conservatism’s “originalism,” “intent of the framers,” the historical meaning of words at the time a law was written, nor liberal appeals to a “living constitution,” provide empirically defensible tools for making impartial judicial decisions.

Early life and education

Lief Carter was born in New York City to Robert and Cynthia Carter, noted international cruising sailors and archeological explorers. He has one sister, Delight Carter Willing. His family settled in the Seattle area where Lief attended Bellevue High School (’58). Between earning the law degree (1965) and the Ph.D. (1972), he served in Bolivia in the Peace Corps.

Academic career

Carter taught at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga from 1971-1973, then moved to the University of Georgia, 1973-1995, during which time he received several university-wide teaching awards. In 1995 he accepted a chaired professorship at Colorado College, where he held the McHugh Family Distinguished Professorship in American Institutions and Leadership. He is now professor emeritus at Colorado College. He also served as visiting professor multiple times at the University of Washington in Seattle and once at Brown University. In 2010 he received the Teaching and Mentoring Award from the American Political Science Association’s section on law and courts.

Carter’s 1972 Ph.D. dissertation examining the functioning of a prosecuting attorney’s office from the perspective of organization theory, since published as THE LIMITS OF ORDER, won the American Political Science Association’s annual Corwin Award for best dissertation in public law. Most of his writings, and particularly REASON IN LAW, have analyzed how legal theory accommodates the philosophical collapse of essentialist models of reality. His books CONTEMPORARY CONSTITUTIONAL LAWMAKING (1987) and AN INTRODUCTION TO CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION (1991) examine and reject conventional theories of constitutional interpretation because these models do not accurately describe observable interpretive practices. Together with his article “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg and the U.S. Supreme Court,” these books argue that constitutional interpretation, and legal reasoning more generally, can be best evaluated and criticized through the lens of aesthetic modes of criticism.

REASON IN LAW, first published by Little, Brown in 1979, is now in its 9th edition at the University of Chicago Press. It has for some years been described as a classic in its field. Professor Thomas Burke of Wellesley has co-authored recent editions. The book details and defends the conclusions that Carter’s approach to law and legal reasoning reaches. His is essay “Law and Politics as Play” (2008) explains how the adversarial Anglo-American common law system—its structures and practices--can best be understood and evaluated as competitive games. The elements of a “good game”—rough equality among competitors and the impartiality and finality of referees, to name just two—realize in practice the norms and ideals embodied in the more abstract concept of “the rule of law.” The essay applies the same analytical approach to party politics in the United States. Like REASON IN LAW, Carter deliberately translates academic jurisprudential norms and concepts into frameworks and experiences shared by laypeople in many of the world’s cultures.

Personal

Lief Carter married Nancy Batson of Knoxville Tennessee in 1962. Their children are Stephen H. Carter of Brooklyn, a film and television production designer, Robert B. Carter of Fort Worth, a hardcopy graphic specialist, and Laura E. Carter of Athens, Georgia, a musician and conservation entrepreneur. He and Nancy Carter divorced in 1993. In 1998 Carter married Dr. Marilyn Vickers, a clinical psychologist. They live in Athens, Georgia.

Selected Works

--Reason in Law, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979), 258 pp. Ninth edition, with Thomas Burke, (University of Chicago Press, 2016), 290 pp. {FOOTNOTE 1 POSTED HERE}

--Administrative Law and Politics, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1983), 477 pp. Second edition with Christine Harrington (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 660 pp; multiple subsequent editions by Christine Harrington.

--Contemporary Constitutional Lawmaking: The Supreme Court and the Art of Politics, (Elmsford, NY:  Pergamon Press, 1985), 209 pp. {FOOTNOTE #2 POSTED HERE}

--An Introduction to Constitutional Interpretation, (White Plains, NY: Longman, Inc., 1991), 160 pp.

--"'Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg' and the United States Supreme Court: Aesthetic Theory in Constitutional Jurisprudence," Polity (Winter 1985) pp. 272-294.

--"Oath Bran; or Law, Politics and Allegiance," Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities (Winter 1990) pp. 93-100.

--"Supreme Fictions," Law and Social Inquiry (Fall 1996) pp. 1061-1075.

--“Law and Politics as Play,” Chicago-Kent Law Review, (2008) vol. 83, pp. 1333-1384.

--“Measuring Humanity: Rights in the 24th Century,” with Michael McCann in Peter Robeson and Jessica Silbey, eds, Law and Justice on the Small Screen, (2012) Oxford and Portland, Oregon, Hart Publishing, pp. 15-32.

Notes

1. Fourth edition reviewed by Ronald Kahn at Law and Politics Book Review, vol. 5, no.2, February, 1995, pp. 68-71, available at http://www.lawcourts.org/LPBR/reviews/carter2.htm

2. Reviewed by Mark Tushnet at American Bar Foundation Research Journal, vol 12, no.1, 1987, pp. 225-231, available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/828390?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents