Ford

The Transformative Potential of Muslim America

Aziz Huq

Crosspost from Balkinization

Ideas do not move our constitutional norms, people do. This much is a lesson of recent scholarship by Bruce Ackerman, Reva Siegel, and Robert Post. New constitutional entitlements like the right to bear arms baptized in 2008, on this account, crest on waves of popular mobilization. Architectonic change to fundamental constitutional structures, familiar from Reconstruction and the New Deal, necessitates multiple political sallies by majorities engorged with populist fire.  

In predicting the shape of constitutionalism to come, therefore, it may be useful to search for emergent social movements with transformative potential. Complementing Robin West’s focus on legislated constitutionalism, resisting Richard Ford’s skepticism about abstract constitutionalism, we might ask: What social movement, so far unrealized, has a potential to pressure entrenched constitutional norms by 2020? 

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Posted on October 1, 2009 @ 10:47 am

Locating Union Rights

Benjamin Sachs

Crosspost from Balkinization

The labor movement has long pined for the constitution, but the story of constitutional protection for workers’ collective rights is one of disappointment. The peak moments of constitutional intervention into union activity have been moments of hostility: most famously, early 20th Century courts invalidated scores of statutes that aimed to insulate workers’ collective action from employer retributions. When workers sought affirmative constitutional protection for their collective activities, the reception has been lukewarm at best.

With this history in mind, I join Richard Ford in the view that, when it comes to workers’ ability to engage in collective action to improve their lives, the Constitution is not the most likely source of progress for the 21st century. I also join Ford in thinking that progress for workers in the 21st Century, just as in the 20th, will depend on political and legislative action, and that what we need the constitution to do, in the main, is not to interfere. 

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Posted on September 30, 2009 @ 9:36 am

The Constitution in 2020 is a companion website to The Constitution in 2020 (Oxford University Press 2009).  Here you will find ten sample chapters from the book, essays about the future of the U.S. Constitution, discussions of current constitutional issues, a bibliography and resources for further study.