Constitutional Inequality

Constitutional Inequality
Title Constitutional Inequality PDF eBook
Author Gilbert Steiner
Publisher Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages 132
Release 2011-04-01
Genre Political Science
ISBN 9780815714293

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Traces the history of the Equal Rights Amendment, explains why it failed to pass, and assesses its chances for future passage.

The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution

The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution
Title The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution PDF eBook
Author Ganesh Sitaraman
Publisher Vintage
Total Pages 434
Release 2018-02-06
Genre Law
ISBN 1101973455

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In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system. For most of Western history, Sitaraman argues, constitutional thinkers assumed economic inequality was inevitable and inescapable—and they designed governments to prevent class divisions from spilling over into class warfare. The American Constitution is different. Compared to Europe and the ancient world, America was a society of almost unprecedented economic equality, and the founding generation saw this equality as essential for the preservation of America’s republic. Over the next two centuries, generations of Americans fought to sustain the economic preconditions for our constitutional system. But today, with economic and political inequality on the rise, Sitaraman says Americans face a choice: Will we accept rising economic inequality and risk oligarchy or will we rebuild the middle class and reclaim our republic? The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution is a tour de force of history, philosophy, law, and politics. It makes a compelling case that inequality is more than just a moral or economic problem; it threatens the very core of our constitutional system.

Constitutional Inequality

Constitutional Inequality
Title Constitutional Inequality PDF eBook
Author Gilbert Yale Steiner
Publisher Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages 0
Release 1985
Genre Law
ISBN 9780815781288

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When Congress passed a proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in March 1972, a high level of optimism about ratification seemed well warranted. Steiner discusses what went wrong between the initial Congressional passage and the final failure to ratify a decade later. He argues that the accidents of legislative timing and the emergence of unanticipated complications related to disputes over conscription and abortion explain the outcome and also presage continuing trouble for efforts to renew the ERA proposal. While Steiner favors passage as a means to redress Constitutional inequality of women, he also notes the negative economic effects that passage would have on lower income women unable to take advantage of new opportunities. He concludes with an analysis of available alternatives and a proposal for future strategy. ISBN 0-8157-8128-8 : $22.95.

The Legal Foundations of Inequality

The Legal Foundations of Inequality
Title The Legal Foundations of Inequality PDF eBook
Author Roberto Gargarella
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Total Pages 287
Release 2010-04-12
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1139485989

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The long revolutionary movements that gave birth to constitutional democracies in the Americas were founded on egalitarian constitutional ideals. They claimed that all men were created equal with similar capacities and also that the community should become self-governing. Following the first constitutional debates that took place in the region, these promising egalitarian claims, which gave legitimacy to the revolutions, soon fell out of favor. Advocates of a conservative order challenged both ideals and favored constitutions that established religion and created an exclusionary political structure. Liberals proposed constitutions that protected individual autonomy and rights but established severe restrictions on the principle of majority rule. Radicals favored an openly majoritarian constitutional organization that, according to many, directly threatened the protection of individual rights. This book examines the influence of these opposite views during the 'founding period' of constitutionalism in countries including the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.

America's Founding and the Struggle over Economic Inequality

America's Founding and the Struggle over Economic Inequality
Title America's Founding and the Struggle over Economic Inequality PDF eBook
Author Clement Fatovic
Publisher University Press of Kansas
Total Pages 360
Release 2014-12-04
Genre History
ISBN 0700621733

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If, as many allege, attacking the gap between rich and poor is a form of class warfare, then the struggle against income inequality is the longest running war in American history. To defenders of the status quo, who argue that the accumulation of wealth free of government intervention is an essential feature of the American way, this book offers a forceful answer. While many of those who oppose addressing economic inequality through public policy today do so in the name of freedom, Clement Fatovic demonstrates that concerns about freedom informed the Founding Fathers' arguments for public policy that tackled economic disparities. Where contemporary arguments against such government efforts conceptualize freedom in economic terms, however, those supporting public policies conducive to greater economic equality invoked a more participatory, republican, conception of freedom. As many of the Founders understood it, economic independence, which requires a wide if imperfect distribution of property, is a precondition of the political independence they so profoundly valued. Fatovic reveals a deep concern among the Founders--including Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Noah Webster--about the impact of economic inequality on political freedom. America's Founding and the Struggle over Economic Inequality traces this concern through many important political debates in Congress and the broader polity that shaped the early Republic--debates over tax policies, public works, public welfare, and the debt from the Revolution. We see how Alexander Hamilton, so often characterized as a cold-hearted apologist for plutocrats, actually favored a more progressive system of taxation, along with various policies aimed at easing the economic hardship of specific groups. In Thomas Paine, frequently portrayed as an advocate of laissez-faire government, we find a champion of a comprehensive welfare state that would provide old-age pensions, public housing, and a host of other benefits as a matter of "right, not charity." Contrary to the picture drawn by so many of today's pundits and politicians, this book shows us how, for the first American statesmen, preventing or minimizing economic disparities was essential to the preservation of the new nation's freedom and practice of self-government.

Supreme Inequality

Supreme Inequality
Title Supreme Inequality PDF eBook
Author Adam Cohen
Publisher Penguin
Total Pages 458
Release 2021-02-23
Genre Political Science
ISBN 0735221529

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“With Supreme Inequality, Adam Cohen has built, brick by brick, an airtight case against the Supreme Court of the last half-century...Cohen’s book is a closing statement in the case against an institution tasked with protecting the vulnerable, which has emboldened the rich and powerful instead.” —Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor, Slate A revelatory examination of the conservative direction of the Supreme Court over the last fifty years. In Supreme Inequality, bestselling author Adam Cohen surveys the most significant Supreme Court rulings since the Nixon era and exposes how, contrary to what Americans like to believe, the Supreme Court does little to protect the rights of the poor and disadvantaged; in fact, it has not been on their side for fifty years. Cohen proves beyond doubt that the modern Court has been one of the leading forces behind the nation’s soaring level of economic inequality, and that an institution revered as a source of fairness has been systematically making America less fair. A triumph of American legal, political, and social history, Supreme Inequality holds to account the highest court in the land and shows how much damage it has done to America’s ideals of equality, democracy, and justice for all.

Not Enough

Not Enough
Title Not Enough PDF eBook
Author Samuel Moyn
Publisher Harvard University Press
Total Pages 276
Release 2018-04-10
Genre Political Science
ISBN 067498482X

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The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. Even as state violations of political rights garnered unprecedented attention due to human rights campaigns, a commitment to material equality disappeared. In its place, market fundamentalism has emerged as the dominant force in national and global economies. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn analyzes how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of a broader social and economic justice. In a pioneering history of rights stretching back to the Bible, Not Enough charts how twentieth-century welfare states, concerned about both abject poverty and soaring wealth, resolved to fulfill their citizens’ most basic needs without forgetting to contain how much the rich could tower over the rest. In the wake of two world wars and the collapse of empires, new states tried to take welfare beyond its original European and American homelands and went so far as to challenge inequality on a global scale. But their plans were foiled as a neoliberal faith in markets triumphed instead. Moyn places the career of the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift from the egalitarian politics of yesterday to the neoliberal globalization of today. Exploring why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside enduring and exploding inequality, and why activists came to seek remedies for indigence without challenging wealth, Not Enough calls for more ambitious ideals and movements to achieve a humane and equitable world.