Major Works

• On the Spirit of the Laws

  - Recommended edition: Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de. The Spirit of the Laws. Edited and translated by Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989.
  Excerpt from the recommended edition: I began by examining men, and I believed that, amidst the infinite diversity of laws and mores, they were not led by their fancies alone. I have set down the principles, and I have seen particular cases conform to them as… More

Commentary

• Montesquieu and the Parlement of Bordeaux

  - Kingston, Rebecca. Montesquieu and the Parlement of Bordeaux. Geneva: Droz, 1996.
  Kingston interprets Montesquieu’s thought in the light of legal theory and practice in 18th century Bordeaux.

• The Cloaking of Power: Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism

  - Carrese, Paul, The Cloaking of Power Montesquieu, Blackstone, and the Rise of Judicial Activism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
  From the publisher: How did the US judiciary become so powerful—powerful enough that state and federal judges once vied to decide a presidential election? What does this prominence mean for the law, constitutionalism, and liberal democracy? In The Cloaking… More

• Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas

  - Berlin, Isaiah. Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas. Edited by Henry Hardy. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2013.
  From the publisher: In this outstanding collection of essays, Isaiah Berlin, one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, discusses the importance of dissenters in the history of ideas—among them Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Herzen, and Sorel.… More