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“A work of striking political and legal imagination.” —Aziz Rana, author of The Two Faces of American Freedom Robert L. Tsai offers a stirring account of how legal ideas that aren’t necessarily about equality have often been used to overcome resistance to justice and remain vital today. From the oppression of emancipated slaves after the Civil War, to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, to President Trump’s ban on Muslim travelers, Tsai applies lessons from past struggles to pressing contemporary issues.
Robert Tsai’s history invites readers into the circle of defiant groups who refused to accept the Constitution’s definition of who “We the People” are and how their authority should be exercised. It is the story of America as told by dissenters: squatters, Native Americans, abolitionists, socialists, internationalists, and racial nationalists.
How four Supreme Court cases in recent years—all argued and won by one indomitable lawyer—are central to the pursuit of equal justice in America. Stephen Bright emerged on the scene as a cause lawyer in the early decades of mass incarceration, when inflammatory politics and harsh changes to criminal justice policy were crashing down on the most vulnerable members of society. He dedicated his career to unleashing social change by representing clients that society had long ago discarded, and advocated for all to receive a fair trial. In Demand the Impossible, Robert L. Tsai traces Bright’s remarkable career to explore the legal ideas that were central to his relentless pursuit of equal j...
This provocative book presents a theory of the First Amendment's development. It reveals the social and institutional processes through which foundational ideas are generated and defends a cultural role for the courts.
A bold new approach to combatting the inherent corruption of representative democracy This provocative book reveals how the majority of modern liberal democracies have become increasingly oligarchic, suffering from a form of structural political decay first conceptualized by ancient philosophers. Systemic Corruption argues that the problem cannot be blamed on the actions of corrupt politicians but is built into the very fabric of our representative systems. Camila Vergara provides a compelling and original genealogy of political corruption from ancient to modern thought, and shows how representative democracy was designed to protect the interests of the already rich and powerful to the detri...
Publisher Description
Explains the origins of the Fourteenth Amendment's birthright citizenship provision, as a story of black Americans' pre-Civil War claims to belonging.
"America's constitutional system evolves through the interplay between three cycles: the rise and fall of dominant political parties, the waxing and waning of political polarization, and alternating episodes of constitutional rot and constitutional renewal. America's politics seems especially fraught today because we are nearing the end of the Republican Party's long political dominance, at the height of a long cycle of political polarization, and suffering from an advanced case of "constitutional rot." Constitutional rot is the historical process through which republics become increasingly less representative and less devoted to the common good. Caused by increasing economic inequality and ...
Power to the People proposes that some forms of populism are inconsistent with constitutionalism, while others aren't. By providing a series of case studies, some organized by nation, others by topic, the book identifies these populist inconsistencies with constitutionalism-and, importantly, when and how they are not. Opening a dialogue for the possibility of a deeper, populist democracy, the book examines recent challenges to the idea that democracy is agood form of government by exploring possibilities for new institutions that can determine and implement a majority's views without always threatening constitutionalism.
Nineteenth-century America witnessed some of the most important and fruitful areas of intersection between the law and humanities, as people began to realize that the law, formerly confined to courts and lawyers, might also find expression in a variety of ostensibly non-legal areas such as painting, poetry, fiction, and sculpture. Bringing together leading researchers from law schools and humanities departments, this Companion touches on regulatory, statutory, and common law in nineteenth-century America and encompasses judges, lawyers, legislators, litigants, and the institutions they inhabited (courts, firms, prisons). It will serve as a reference for specific information on a variety of law- and humanities-related topics as well as a guide to understanding how the two disciplines developed in tandem in the long nineteenth century.