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The Fortification Of Inequality: Constitutional Doctrine And The Political Economy, Kate Andrias
The Fortification Of Inequality: Constitutional Doctrine And The Political Economy, Kate Andrias
Articles
As Parts I and II of this Essay elaborate, the examination yields three observations of relevance to constitutional law more generally: First, judge-made constitutional doctrine, though by no means the primary cause of rising inequality, has played an important role in reinforcing and exacerbating it. Judges have acquiesced to legislatively structured economic inequality, while also restricting the ability of legislatures to remedy it. Second, while economic inequality has become a cause célèbre only in the last few years, much of the constitutional doctrine that has contributed to its flourishing is longstanding. Moreover, for several decades, even the Court’s more liberal …
The Middle-Class Constitution: A Response, Ganesh Sitaraman
The Middle-Class Constitution: A Response, Ganesh Sitaraman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
I am very grateful to the Boston University Law Review for bringing together such a terrific group of scholars to engage with my book, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic. It is a testament to the work and excellence of the Boston University Law Review that they pulled together such an intellectually engaging group of commentators. My deepest thanks also to Professors Markovits, Rahman, Lyons, Epstein, and Somin for taking the time to read the book and comment on it.
Constitutional Economic Justice: Structural Power For "We The People", Martha T. Mccluskey
Constitutional Economic Justice: Structural Power For "We The People", Martha T. Mccluskey
Journal Articles
Toward that goal, this essay proposes a structural principle of collective economic power for “we the people.” This principle is both consistent with longstanding Constitutional ideals and tailored to the current challenges of neoliberal ideology and policy. It develops two premises: first, it rejects the neoliberal economic ideology that defines legitimate power and freedom as individualized “choice” constrained by an existing political economy. Instead, this proposed principle recognizes that meaningful political economic freedom and power fundamentally consist of access to collective organizations with potential to create a “more perfect union” with better and less constrained options. Second, the post-Lochner principle …
The Political Economy Of "Constitutional Political Economy", Jeremy K. Kessler
The Political Economy Of "Constitutional Political Economy", Jeremy K. Kessler
Faculty Scholarship
Since the early 1990s, constitutional history has experienced a renaissance. This revival had many causes, but three stand out: the Rehnquist Court's attack on formerly sacrosanct features of the "New Deal agenda"; Reagan-Era reassessments of American political development by political scientists, historians, and historical sociologists; and the frustration of constitutional scholars with the inability of legal process theory or political philosophy to produce "authoritative constitutional principles." Spurred by legal crisis and this mix of disciplinary innovation and stagnation, law professors began to tell new stories about our constitutional heritage. They focused on the sources and significance of the New Deal's …
Economic Structure And Constitutional Structure, Ganesh Sitaraman
Economic Structure And Constitutional Structure, Ganesh Sitaraman
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In the last four decades, the American middle class has been hollowed out, and fears are growing that economic inequality is leading to political inequality. These trends raise a troubling question: Can our constitutional system survive the collapse of the middle class? This question might seem tangential-if not unrelated-to contemporary constitutional theory. But for most of the history ofpolitical thought, one of the central problems of constitutional design was the relationship between the distribution of wealth in society and the structure of government. Two traditions emerged from thinking about this relationship. The first tradition assumed that society would be divided …
Building Labor's Constitution, Kate Andrias
Building Labor's Constitution, Kate Andrias
Articles
In the last few years, scholars have sought to revitalize a range of constitutional arguments against mounting economic inequality and in favor of labor rights. They urge contemporary worker movements to lay claim to the Constitution. But worker movements, for the most part, have not done so. This Essay takes seriously that choice. It examines reasons for the absence of constitutional argumentation by contemporary worker movements, particularly the role of courts and legal elites in our constitutional system, and it contends that labor’s ongoing statutory and regulatory reform efforts are essential prerequisites to the development of progressive constitutional labor rights. …
Separations Of Wealth: Inequality And The Erosion Of Checks And Balances, Kate Andrias
Separations Of Wealth: Inequality And The Erosion Of Checks And Balances, Kate Andrias
Articles
American government is dysfunctional: Gridlock, filibusters, and expanding presidential power, everyone seems to agree, threaten our basic system of constitutional governance. Who, or what, is to blame? In the standard account, the fault lies with the increasing polarization of our political parties. That standard story, however, ignores an important culprit: Concentrated wealth and its organization to achieve political ends. The only way to understand our current constitutional predicament—and to rectify it—is to pay more attention to the role that organized wealth plays in our system of checks and balances. This Article shows that the increasing concentration of wealth and political …
Keynote Speech: A Letter From The Original Cause Lawyer, F. Michael Higginbotham
Keynote Speech: A Letter From The Original Cause Lawyer, F. Michael Higginbotham
All Faculty Scholarship
This symposium speech is a short piece which talks about why there is a need for law students to become cause lawyers, the symposium being: cause lawyers and cause lawyering in the sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education. The writer creates an allegorical scene where he's snowed in in his home during a snowstorm, lightning strikes his computer, and the computer comes to life in the form a message being typed, and "channeled" to him by Thurgood Marshall. The former Justice of the Supreme Court proceeds to state the many reasons why there is still a need for …
Constitutional Constraints On Redistribution Through Class Power, Mark Barenberg
Constitutional Constraints On Redistribution Through Class Power, Mark Barenberg
Faculty Scholarship
My comments will not be so much a critique as an elaboration of the two papers, especially Professor Neuman's paper on United States (U.S.) law, since I am not an expert on German constitutional law. For those less familiar with U.S. law, my goal is to bring to light some additional elements of the U.S. constitutional tradition that impede the use of law to achieve economic equality-elements of U.S. constitutional law that reinforce the weak "general equality" principle of the Equal Protection Clause.2 I will use U.S. labor law as my vehicle for showing the variety of constitutional principles that …