Rights, for Vermeule, are not to be taken as seriously as, for example, Ronald Dworkin does.[16] Instead, rights are properly subordinated to higher conceptions of the common good.[17] Vermeule, who takes a Catholic integralist view as the source of his own values, does not see rights as legally or politically central.[18] The same goes for democracy, which Vermeule sees as a contingent type of government, the value of which depends on whether it acts for the common good.[19] Without batting an… [read post]