Panel Recap -- America and the World

The Constitution 2020 Conference opened powerfully with a panel that engaged questions essential to defining a vision of progressive constitutionalism: Who ‘counts’ as American?  And what kind of law ‘counts’ as American?

The panelists, along with their moderator, Bruce Ackerman, tested the boundaries between citizen and non-citizen, and between U.S. and international law, in the context of national security, foreign policy, immigration enforcement, and discrimination against minorities since September 11, 2001.

The panel opened with Aziz Huq (University of Chicago Law School) and Muneer Ahmad (Yale Law School), who tackled issues on citizenship, personhood, and advocacy. Their comments framed an approach to the question of who ‘counts’ as American. Then Jon Michaels (University of California Law School – Los Angeles) and Oona Hathaway (Yale Law School) reflected on the need to reintroduce democracy to determine what kind of law ‘counts’ as American law. Their proposals paid special attention to checking executive power in national security and foreign policy matters.

Video Courtesy of Yale Law School

Who ‘counts’ as American?

Since September 11, 2001, Muslim Americans have had a common encounter with discrimination that has often placed them outside the circle of who ‘counts’ as American. While discrimination can and has alienated Muslims, Aziz Huq proposed that this shared experience also has the power to form the otherwise diverse and fragmented community into a single interest group that can reclaim core constitutional rights, such as free speech, freedom of religion, and privacy.

As credible advocates for constitutional change, Muslim Americans can powerfully advocate to base counter-terrorism operations on trust and cooperation with the Muslim community, rather than on surveillance and suspicion. Huq urged that we open foreign policy decision-making to a diversity of voices, including Muslim Americans, because “without voice, loyalty often erodes.”

Religious Institutions, Pluralism, and the Infrastructure of Religious Freedom

Crosspost from Balkinization

What The Constitution in 2020 calls a “progressive vision of constitutional law in the years ahead” should, I believe, re-discover, incorporate, and emphasize what might seem a not-very-progressive – because very old – idea.  Here it is:  Constitutionalism generally, and religious freedom more specifically, are well served by the protection and flourishing of an array of self-governing non-state authorities.  The Jacobins were wrong.  In a nutshell, religious liberty is both nurtured in and protected by – it needs, I think – religious communities, associations, and institutions.

Obama's Inauguration: A Progressive Approach to Religion in the Public Sphere?

 

"We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and nonbelievers."
 – Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, January 2009

Since George Washington invoked “the Almighty Being” in his first inaugural address, prayer has opened America's Presidential inaugural ceremonies.  Recent Presidents -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- have chosen religious figures who have offered broad ecumenical prayers to appeal to the widest range of people.

But, in a departure from the norm, Barack Obama chose voices from extreme ends of the political spectrum and wove them together into a pluralistic patchwork of public religious expression: the first openly gay Episcopalian bishop commenced the festivities, an evangelical preacher known for his opposition to gay marriage offered the invocation, and a veteran civil rights leader delivered the benediction.  At the National Prayer Service the next day, the first female president of the Disciples of Christ gave the sermon, and Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic leaders offered prayers from their faith traditions. (To see video coverage of the festitivites, click here.)

Never before had an inaugural ceremony embraced such radically inclusive religious representation.  Obama was the first to give a prominent place to Muslims and Hindus, both in the ceremony and his inauguration speech.  (The Bush and Clinton inaugurations were racially diverse but remained almost exclusively Judeo-Christian, prominently featuring Billy Graham.)  Can Obama’s inauguration hold up a picture of a new progressive approach to religion in the public sphere?