Progressive States' Rights

Progressive States' Rights PDF Author: Sean Beienburg
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700636196
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Today, when politicians, pundits, and scholars speak of states’ rights, they are usually referring to Southern efforts to curtail the advance of civil rights policies or to conservative opposition to the federal government under the New Deal, Great Society, and Warren Court. Sean Beienburg shows that this was not always the case, and that there was once a time when federalism—the form of government that divides powers between the state and federal governments—was associated with progressive, rather than conservative, politics. In Progressive States’ Rights, Sean Beienburg tells an alternative story of federalism by exploring states’ efforts in the years before the New Deal of shaping constitutional discourse to ensure that a protective welfare and regulatory governmental regime would be built in the states rather than the national government. These state-level actors not only aggressively participated in constitutional politics and interpretation but also specifically sought to create an alternative model of state-building that would pair a robust state power on behalf of the public good with a traditionally limited national government. Current politics generally collapse policy and constitutional views (where a progressive view on one policy also assumes a progressive view on the other), but Beienburg shows that this was not always true, and indeed many of those most devoted to progressive policy views were deeply committed to a conservative constitutionalism.

Progressive States' Rights

Progressive States' Rights PDF Author: Sean Beienburg
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700636196
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
Today, when politicians, pundits, and scholars speak of states’ rights, they are usually referring to Southern efforts to curtail the advance of civil rights policies or to conservative opposition to the federal government under the New Deal, Great Society, and Warren Court. Sean Beienburg shows that this was not always the case, and that there was once a time when federalism—the form of government that divides powers between the state and federal governments—was associated with progressive, rather than conservative, politics. In Progressive States’ Rights, Sean Beienburg tells an alternative story of federalism by exploring states’ efforts in the years before the New Deal of shaping constitutional discourse to ensure that a protective welfare and regulatory governmental regime would be built in the states rather than the national government. These state-level actors not only aggressively participated in constitutional politics and interpretation but also specifically sought to create an alternative model of state-building that would pair a robust state power on behalf of the public good with a traditionally limited national government. Current politics generally collapse policy and constitutional views (where a progressive view on one policy also assumes a progressive view on the other), but Beienburg shows that this was not always true, and indeed many of those most devoted to progressive policy views were deeply committed to a conservative constitutionalism.

Prohibition, the Constitution, and States' Rights

Prohibition, the Constitution, and States' Rights PDF Author: Sean Beienburg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022663213X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Colorado’s legalization of marijuana spurred intense debate about the extent to which the Constitution preempts state-enacted laws and statutes. Colorado’s legal cannabis program generated a strange scenario in which many politicians, including many who freely invoke the Tenth Amendment, seemed to be attacking the progressive state for asserting states’ rights. Unusual as this may seem, this has happened before—in the early part of the twentieth century, as America concluded a decades-long struggle over the suppression of alcohol during Prohibition. Sean Beienburg recovers a largely forgotten constitutional debate, revealing how Prohibition became a battlefield on which skirmishes of American political development, including the debate over federalism and states’ rights, were fought. Beienburg focuses on the massive extension of federal authority involved in Prohibition and the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, describing the roles and reactions of not just Congress, the presidents, and the Supreme Court but political actors throughout the states, who jockeyed with one another to claim fidelity to the Tenth Amendment while reviling nationalism and nullification alike. The most comprehensive treatment of the constitutional debate over Prohibition to date, the book concludes with a discussion of the parallels and differences between Prohibition in the 1920s and debates about the legalization of marijuana today.

How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution

How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution PDF Author: Richard A. Epstein
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1933995297
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution explores the fundamental shift in political and economic thought of the Progressive Era and how the Supreme Court was used to transform the Constitution into one that reflected the ideas of their own time, while undermining America’s founding principles. Epstein examines key decisions to demonstrate how Progressives attacked much of the legal precedent and eventually weakened the Court’s thinking concerning limited federal powers and the protection of individual rights. Progressives on the Court undermined basic economic principles of freedom and competition, paving the way for the modern redistributive and regulatory state. This book shows that our modern “constitutional law,” fashioned largely by the New Deal Court in the late 1930s, has its roots in Progressivism, not in our country's founding principles, and how so many of those ideas, however discredited by more recent economic thought, still shape the Court's decisions.

We the People

We the People PDF Author: Erwin Chemerinsky
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 1250166004
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
"This work will become the defining text on progressive constitutionalism — a parallel to Thomas Picketty’s contribution but for all who care deeply about constitutional law. Beautifully written and powerfully argued, this is a masterpiece." --Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School, and author of Free Culture Worried about what a super conservative majority on the Supreme Court means for the future of civil liberties? From gun control to reproductive health, a conservative court will reshape the lives of all Americans for decades to come. The time to develop and defend a progressive vision of the U.S. Constitution that protects the rights of all people is now. University of California Berkeley Dean and respected legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky expertly exposes how conservatives are using the Constitution to advance their own agenda that favors business over consumers and employees, and government power over individual rights. But exposure is not enough. Progressives have spent too much of the last forty-five years trying to preserve the legacy of the Warren Court’s most important rulings and reacting to the Republican-dominated Supreme Courts by criticizing their erosion of rights—but have not yet developed a progressive vision for the Constitution itself. Yet, if we just look to the promise of the Preamble—liberty and justice for all—and take seriously its vision, a progressive reading of the Constitution can lead us forward as we continue our fight ensuring democratic rule, effective government, justice, liberty, and equality. Includes the Complete Constitution and Amendments of the United States of America

Louis D. Brandeis

Louis D. Brandeis PDF Author: Jeffrey Rosen
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300160445
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
According to Jeffrey Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis was “the Jewish Jefferson,” the greatest critic of what he called “the curse of bigness,” in business and government, since the author of the Declaration of Independence. Published to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of his Supreme Court confirmation on June 1, 1916, Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet argues that Brandeis was the most farseeing constitutional philosopher of the twentieth century. In addition to writing the most famous article on the right to privacy, he also wrote the most important Supreme Court opinions about free speech, freedom from government surveillance, and freedom of thought and opinion. And as the leader of the American Zionist movement, he convinced Woodrow Wilson and the British government to recognize a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Combining narrative biography with a passionate argument for why Brandeis matters today, Rosen explores what Brandeis, the Jeffersonian prophet, can teach us about historic and contemporary questions involving the Constitution, monopoly, corporate and federal power, technology, privacy, free speech, and Zionism.

The First Civil Right

The First Civil Right PDF Author: Naomi Murakawa
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199892806
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
In The First Civil Right is a groundbreaking analysis of root of the conflicts that lie at the intersection of race and the legal system in America. Naomi Murakawa inverts the conventional wisdom by arguing that the expansion of the federal carceral state-a system that disproportionately imprisons blacks and Latinos-was, in fact, rooted in the civil-rights liberalism of the 1940s and early 1960s, not in the period after.

Why America Needs a Left

Why America Needs a Left PDF Author: Eli Zaretsky
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745656560
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
The United States today cries out for a robust, self-respecting, intellectually sophisticated left, yet the very idea of a left appears to have been discredited. In this brilliant new book, Eli Zaretsky rethinks the idea by examining three key moments in American history: the Civil War, the New Deal and the range of New Left movements in the 1960s and after including the civil rights movement, the women's movement and gay liberation.In each period, he argues, the active involvement of the left - especially its critical interaction with mainstream liberalism - proved indispensable. American liberalism, as represented by the Democratic Party, is necessarily spineless and ineffective without a left. Correspondingly, without a strong liberal center, the left becomes sectarian, authoritarian, and worse. Written in an accessible way for the general reader and the undergraduate student, this book provides a fresh perspective on American politics and political history. It has often been said that the idea of a left originated in the French Revolution and is distinctively European; Zaretsky argues, by contrast, that America has always had a vibrant and powerful left. And he shows that in those critical moments when the country returns to itself, it is on its left/liberal bases that it comes to feel most at home.

How Many Is Too Many?

How Many Is Too Many? PDF Author: Philip Cafaro
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022619065X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
How many immigrants should we allow into the US annually, and who gets to come? The question is easy to ask, but hard to answer, for thoughtful individuals and for our nation as a whole. Philosopher Philip Cafaro answers the question as a political progressive who, perhaps surprisingly, wants to reduce immigration into the United States. Cafaro details how current immigration levelsthe highest in American historyundermine attempts to achieve progressive economic, environmental and social goals. He shows that by thinking through immigration, liberals can get clearer on their own goals. These do not include having the largest possible percentage of racial and ethnic minoritiesbut creating a society free of racial discrimination, where diversity is appreciated. They do not include an ever-growing economybut an economy that works for the good of society as a whole. They most certainly do not include a crowded, cooked, polluted, ever-more-tamed environmentbut a healthy, spacious landscape with sufficient room for wild nature. Finally, liberals goals should include playing our proper role as global citizenswhile paying attention to our special responsibilities as Americans. Like it or not, those responsibilities include setting US immigration policy."

Except for Palestine

Except for Palestine PDF Author: Marc Lamont Hill
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620975939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
A bold call for the American Left to extend their politics to the issues of Israel-Palestine, from a New York Times bestselling author and an expert on U.S. policy in the region In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how holding fast to one-sided and unwaveringly pro-Israel policies reflects the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States. Except for Palestine deftly argues that progressives and liberals who oppose regressive policies on immigration, racial justice, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, and other issues must extend these core principles to the oppression of Palestinians. In doing so, the authors take seriously the political concerns and well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians, demonstrating the extent to which U.S. policy has made peace harder to attain. They also unravel the conflation of advocacy for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Hill and Plitnick provide a timely and essential intervention by examining multiple dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conversation, including Israel's growing disdain for democracy, the effects of occupation on Palestine, the siege of Gaza, diminishing American funding for Palestinian relief, and the campaign to stigmatize any critique of Israeli occupation. Except for Palestine is a searing polemic and a cri de coeur for elected officials, activists, and everyday citizens alike to align their beliefs and politics with their values.

Rehabilitating Lochner

Rehabilitating Lochner PDF Author: David E. Bernstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226043533
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In this timely reevaluation of an infamous Supreme Court decision, David E. Bernstein provides a compelling survey of the history and background of Lochner v. New York. This 1905 decision invalidated state laws limiting work hours and became the leading case contending that novel economic regulations were unconstitutional. Sure to be controversial, Rehabilitating Lochner argues that the decision was well grounded in precedent—and that modern constitutional jurisprudence owes at least as much to the limited-government ideas of Lochner proponents as to the more expansive vision of its Progressive opponents. Tracing the influence of this decision through subsequent battles over segregation laws, sex discrimination, civil liberties, and more, Rehabilitating Lochner argues not only that the court acted reasonably in Lochner, but that Lochner and like-minded cases have been widely misunderstood and unfairly maligned ever since.