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The Future Of Materialist Constitutionalism, Robert L. Tsai
The Future Of Materialist Constitutionalism, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
This is a review essay of Camila Vergara, Systemic Corruption (Princeton 2020). In this lively and important book, Vergara argues that corruption should be given a structural definition, one that connects corruption with inequality and is plebeian rather than elitist. After surveying the work of thinkers from Machiavelli to Arendt, she proposes a set of solutions grounded in the civic republican tradition.
I press several points in my essay. First, Vergara's linkage of corruption with inequality is promising, but introduces tension between a general problem (domination of the many by the few) and a more specific problem (the domination of …
Can Sandel Dethrone Meritocracy?, Robert L. Tsai
Can Sandel Dethrone Meritocracy?, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
This is an invited review essay of Michael Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good? (FSG 2020), for the inaugural issue of The American Journal of Law and Inequality (R. Kennedy, M. Minow, C. Sunstein, eds.). Sandel makes three principal arguments: (1) meritocracy is deeply flawed because it worsens inequality and fills meritocracy's winners with hubris and losers with shame; (2) universities should introduce a lottery into the admissions process; and (3) this reform, coupled with increased emphasis on the dignity of labor, will repair the politics of resentment that now roil our country.
I respond …
Supreme Court Precedent And The Politics Of Repudiation, Robert L. Tsai
Supreme Court Precedent And The Politics Of Repudiation, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
This is an invited essay that will appear in a book titled "Law's Infamy," edited by Austin Sarat as part of the Amherst Series on Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought. Every legal order that aspires to be called just is held together by not only principles of justice but also archetypes of morally reprehensible outcomes, and villains as well as heroes. Chief Justice Roger Taney, who believed himself to be a hero solving the great moral question of slavery in the Dred Scott case, is today detested for trying to impose a racist, slaveholding vision of the Constitution upon America. …