The Principles Of Constitutional Democracy And The New Deal

In a powerful new narrative, G. Edward White challenges the reigning understanding of twentieth-century Supreme Court decisions, particularly in the New Deal period. He does this by rejecting such misleading characterizations as "liberal," "conservative," and "reactionary," and by reexamining several key topics in constitutional law. Through a close reading of sources and analysis of the minds and sensibilities of a wide array of justices, including Holmes, Brandeis, Sutherland, Butler, Van Devanter, and McReynolds, White rediscovers the world of early-twentieth-century constitutional law and jurisprudence. He provides a counter-story to that of the triumphalist New Dealers. The deep conflicts over constitutional ideas that took place in the first half of the twentieth century are sensitively recovered, and the morality play of good liberals vs. mossbacks is replaced. This is the only thoroughly researched and fully realized history of the constitutional thought and practice of all the Supreme Court justices during the turbulent period that made America modern.

“A powerful argument, swept along by Katznelson’s robust prose and the imposing scholarship that lies behind it.”—Kevin Boyle, New York Times Book Review A work that “deeply reconceptualizes the New Deal and raises countless provocative questions” (David Kennedy), Fear Itself changes the ground rules for our understanding of this pivotal era in American history. Ira Katznelson examines the New Deal through the lens of a pervasive, almost existential fear that gripped a world defined by the collapse of capitalism and the rise of competing dictatorships, as well as a fear created by the ruinous racial divisions in American society. Katznelson argues that American democracy was both saved and distorted by a Faustian collaboration that guarded racial segregation as it built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power. Fear Itself charts the creation of the modern American state and “how a belief in the common good gave way to a central government dominated by interest-group politics and obsessed with national security” (Louis Menand, The New Yorker).

A bold call to reclaim an American tradition that argues the Constitution imposes a duty on government to fight oligarchy and ensure broadly shared wealth. Oligarchy is a threat to the American republic. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, we risk losing the Òrepublican form of governmentÓ the Constitution requires. Today, courts enforce the Constitution as if it has almost nothing to say about this threat. But as Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath show in this revolutionary retelling of constitutional history, a commitment to prevent oligarchy once stood at the center of a robust tradition in American political and constitutional thought. Fishkin and Forbath demonstrate that reformers, legislators, and even judges working in this Òdemocracy of opportunityÓ tradition understood that the Constitution imposes a duty on legislatures to thwart oligarchy and promote a broad distribution of wealth and political power. These ideas led Jacksonians to fight special economic privileges for the few, Populists to try to break up monopoly power, and Progressives to fight for the constitutional right to form a union. During Reconstruction, Radical Republicans argued in this tradition that racial equality required breaking up the oligarchy of slave power and distributing wealth and opportunity to former slaves and their descendants. President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers built their politics around this tradition, winning the fight against the Òeconomic royalistsÓ and Òindustrial despots.Ó But today, as we enter a new Gilded Age, this tradition in progressive American economic and political thought lies dormant. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution begins the work of recovering it and exploring its profound implications for our deeply unequal society and badly damaged democracy.

Janos Kis outlines a new theory of constitutional democracy. Addresses the widely held belief that liberal democracy embodies an uneasy compromise of incompatible values: those of liberal rights on the one hand, and democratic equality on the other. Liberalism is said to compromise democracy, while democracy is said to endanger the values of liberalism.

In The Supreme Court and Constitutional Democracy John Agresto traces the development of American judicial power, paying close attention to what he views as the very real threat of judicial supremacy. Agresto examines the role of the judiciary in a democratic society and discusses the proper place of congressional power in constitutional issues. Agresto argues that while the separation of congressional and judicial functions is a fundamental tenet of American government, the present system is not effective in maintaining an appropriate balance of power. He shows that continued judicial expansion, especially into the realm of public policy, might have severe consequences for America's national life and direction, and offers practical recommendations for safeguarding against an increasingly powerful Supreme Court. John Agresto's controversial argument, set in the context of a historical and theoretical inquiry, will be of great interest to scholars and students in political science and law, especially American constitutional law and political theory.

On January 6, 2021, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, and other supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The insurrection was widely denounced as an attack on the Constitution, and the subsequent impeachment trial was framed as a defense of constitutional government. What received little attention is that the January 6 insurrectionists themselves justified the violence they perpetrated as a defense of the Constitution; after battling the Capitol police and breaking doors and windows, the mob marched inside, chanting “Defend your liberty, defend the Constitution.” In Real Americans: National Identity, Violence, and the Constitution Jared A. Goldstein boldly challenges the conventional wisdom that a shared devotion to the Constitution is the essence of what it means to be American. In his careful analysis of US history, Goldstein demonstrates the well-established pattern of movements devoted to defending the power of dominant racial, ethnic, and religious groups that deploy the rhetoric of constitutional devotion to express their national visions and justify their violence. Goldstein describes this as constitutional nationalism, an ideology that defines being an American as standing with, and by, the Constitution. This history includes the Ku Klux Klan’s self-declared mission to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” which served to justify its campaign of violence in the 1860s and 1870s to prevent Black people from exercising the right to vote; Protestant Americans who felt threatened by the growing population of Catholics and Jews and organized mass movements to defend their status and power by declaring that the Constitution was made for a Protestant nation; native-born Americans who resisted the rising population of immigrants and who mobilized to exclude the newcomers and their alien ideas; corporate leaders arguing that regulation is unconstitutional and un-American; and Timothy McVeigh, who believed he was defending the Constitution by killing 168 people with a truck bomb. Real Americans: National Identity, Violence, and the Constitution reveals how the Constitution as the central embodiment and common ground of American identity has long been used to promote conflicting versions of American identity and to justify hatred, violence, and exclusion.

"A Practical Guide to Constitution Building provides an essential foundation for understanding constitutions and constitution building. Full of world examples of ground-breaking agreements and innovative provisions adopted during processes of constitutional change, the Guide offers a wide range of examples of how constitutions develop and how their development can establish and entrench democratic values. Beyond comparative examples, the Guide contains in-depth analysis of key components of constitutions and the forces of change that shape them. The Guide analyzes the adoption of the substantive elements of a new constitution by looking at forces for the aggregation or dissemination of governmental power, and forces for greater legalization or politicization of governmental power, and examining how these forces influence the content of the constitution. It urges practitioners to look carefully at the forces at play within their individual contexts in order to better understand constitutional dynamics and play a role in shaping a constitution that will put into place a functioning democratic government and foster lasting peace."--