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Author: Thomas Christiano
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191613916
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
What is the ethical basis of democracy? And what reasons do we have to go along with democratic decisions even when we disagree with them? And when do we have reason to say that we may justly ignore democratic decisions? These questions must be answered if we are to have answers to some of the most important questions facing our global community, which include whether there is a human right to democracy and whether we must attempt to spread democracy throughout the globe. This book provides a philosophical account of the moral foundations of democracy and of liberalism. It shows how democracy and basic liberal rights are grounded in the principle of public equality, which tells us that in the establishment of law and policy we must treat persons as equals in ways they can see are treating them as equals. The principle of public equality is shown to be the fundamental principle of social justice. This account enables us to understand the nature and roles of adversarial politics and public deliberation in political life. It gives an account of the grounds of the authority of democracy. It also shows when the authority of democracy runs out. The author shows how the violations of democratic and liberal rights are beyond the legitimate authority of democracy, how the creation of persistent minorities in a democratic society, and the failure to ensure a basic minimum for all persons weaken the legitimate authority of democracy.
Author: Thomas Christiano
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191613916
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
What is the ethical basis of democracy? And what reasons do we have to go along with democratic decisions even when we disagree with them? And when do we have reason to say that we may justly ignore democratic decisions? These questions must be answered if we are to have answers to some of the most important questions facing our global community, which include whether there is a human right to democracy and whether we must attempt to spread democracy throughout the globe. This book provides a philosophical account of the moral foundations of democracy and of liberalism. It shows how democracy and basic liberal rights are grounded in the principle of public equality, which tells us that in the establishment of law and policy we must treat persons as equals in ways they can see are treating them as equals. The principle of public equality is shown to be the fundamental principle of social justice. This account enables us to understand the nature and roles of adversarial politics and public deliberation in political life. It gives an account of the grounds of the authority of democracy. It also shows when the authority of democracy runs out. The author shows how the violations of democratic and liberal rights are beyond the legitimate authority of democracy, how the creation of persistent minorities in a democratic society, and the failure to ensure a basic minimum for all persons weaken the legitimate authority of democracy.
Author: Judith A. Baer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501722751
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
The principle of equality embedded in the Declaration of Independence and reaffirmed in the Constitution does not distinguish between individuals according to their capacities or merits. It is written into these documents to ensure that each and every person enjoys equal respect and equal rights. Judith Baer maintains, however, that in fact American judicial decisions have consistently denied individuals the form of equality to which they are legally entitled—that the courts have interpreted constitutional guarantees of equal protection in ways that undermine the original intent of Congress. In Equality under the Constitution, Baer examines the background, scope, and purpose of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment and the history of its interpretation by the courts. She traces the development of the idea of equality, drawing on the Bill of Rights, Congressional records, the Civil War amendments, and other sections of the Constitution. Baer discusses many of the significant equal-protection cases decided by the Supreme Court from the time of the amendment’s ratification, including decisions on reverse discrimination, age discrimination, the rights of the disabled, and gay rights. She concludes with a theory of equality more faithful to the history, language, and spirit of the Constitution.
Author: Rebecca E Zietlow
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814797075
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
In Enforcing Equality, Rebecca E. Zietlow assesses Congress's historical role in interpreting the Constitution and protecting the individual rights of citizens, provocatively challenging conventional wisdom that courts, not legislatures, are best suited for this role. Specifically focusing on what she calls “rights of belonging”—a set of positive entitlements that are necessary to ensure inclusion, participation, and equal membership in diverse communities—Zietlow examines three historical eras: Reconstruction, the New Deal era, and Civil Rights era of the 1960s. She reveals that in these key periods when rights of belonging were contested and defined, Congress has played the role of protector of rights at least as often as the Supreme Court has adopted this role. Enforcing Equality also engages in a sophisticated theoretical analysis of Congress as a protector of rights, comparing the institutional strengths and weaknesses of Congress and the courts as protectors of the rights of belonging. With the recent new appointments to the Supreme Court and Congressional elections in November 2006, this timely book argues that individual rights are best enforced by the political process because they express the values of our national community, and as such, litigation is no substitute for collective political action.
Author: Kate Kelly
Publisher: Gibbs Smith
ISBN: 1423658736
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406
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Book Description
We are all living through modern constitutional history in the making, and Ordinary Equality helps teach about the past, present, and future of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) through the lives of the bold, fearless women and queer people who have helped shape the U.S. Constitution. Ordinary Equality digs into the fascinating and little-known history of the ERA and the lives of the incredible—and often overlooked—women and queer people who have helped shape the U.S. Constitution for more than 200 years. Based on author Kate Kelly’s acclaimed podcast of the same name, Ordinary Equality recounts a story centuries in the making. From before the Constitution was even drafted to the modern day, she examines how and why constitutional equality for women and Americans of all marginalized genders has been systematically undermined for the past 100-plus years, and then calls us all to join the current movement to put it back on the table and get it across the finish line. Kate Kelly provides a much-needed fresh perspective on the ERA for feminists of all ages, and this engaging, illustrated look at history, law, and activism is sure to inspire many to continue the fight. Individual chapters tell the stories of Molly Brant (Koñwatsi-tsiaiéñni / Degonwadonti), Abigail Adams, Phillis Wheatley, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Alice Paul, Mary Church Terrell, Pauli Murray, Martha Wright Griffiths, Patsy Takemoto Mink, Barbara Jordan, and Pat Spearman, and features other key players and concepts, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Title IX, Danica Roem, and many more.
Author: Christopher Green
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317539397
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
The Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is arguably the most historically important clause of the most significant part of the US Constitution. Designed to be a central guarantor of civil rights and civil liberties following Reconstruction, this clause could have been at the center of most of the country's constitutional controversies, not only during Reconstruction, but in the modern period as well; yet for a variety of historical reasons, including precedent-setting narrow interpretations, the Privileges or Immunities Clause has been cast aside by the Supreme Court. This book investigates the Clause in a textualist-originalist manner, an approach increasingly popular among both academics and judges, to examine the meanings actually expressed by the text in its original context. Arguing for a revival of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, author Christopher Green lays the groundwork for assessing the originalist credentials of such areas of law as school segregation, state action, sex discrimination, incorporation of the Bill of Rights against states, the relationship between tradition and policy analysis in assessing fundamental rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment rights of corporations and aliens. Thoroughly argued and historically well-researched, this book demonstrates that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects liberty and equality, and it will be of interest to legal academics, American legal historians, and anyone interested in American constitutional history.
Author: Jody Heymann
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520309634
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
In a world where basic human rights are under attack and discrimination is widespread, Advancing Equality reminds us of the critical role of constitutions in creating and protecting equal rights. Combining a comparative analysis of equal rights in the constitutions of all 193 United Nations member countries with inspiring stories of activism and powerful court cases from around the globe, the book traces the trends in constitution drafting over the past half century and examines how stronger protections against discrimination have transformed lives. Looking at equal rights across gender, race and ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability, social class, and migration status, the authors uncover which groups are increasingly guaranteed equal rights in constitutions, whether or not these rights on paper have been translated into practice, and which nations lag behind. Serving as a comprehensive call to action for anyone who cares about their country’s future, Advancing Equality challenges us to remember how far we all still must go for equal rights for all.
Author: Robert A. Dahl
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030013374X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 156
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Book Description
In this book, the eminent psychoanalyst Leonard Shengold looks at why some people are resistant to change, even when it seems to promise a change for the better. Drawing on a lifetime of clinical experience as well as wide readings of world literature, Shengold shows how early childhood relationships with parents can lead to a powerful conviction that change means loss. Dr. Shengold, who is well known for his work on the lasting affects of childhood trauma and child abuse in such seminal books as Soul Murder and Soul Murder Revisited, continues his exploration into the consequences of early psychological injury and loss. In the examples of his patients and in the lives and work of such figures as Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Wordsworth, and Henrik Ibsen, Shengold looks at the different ways in which unconscious impressions connected with early experiences and fantasies about parents are integrated into individual lives. He shows the difficulties he encounters with his patients in raising these memories to the conscious level where they can be known and owned; and he also shows, in his survey of literary figures, how these memories can become part of the creative process. Haunted by Parents offers a deeply humane reflection on the values and limitations of therapy, on memory and the lingering effects of the past, and on the possibility of recognizing the promise of the future.
Author: Geoffrey R. Stone
Publisher:
ISBN: 019093820X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) -- Mapp v. Ohio (1961) -- Engel v. Vitale (1962) -- Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) -- New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) -- Reynolds v. Sims (1964) -- Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) -- Miranda v. Arizona (1966) -- Loving v. Virginia (1967) -- Katz v. United States (1967) -- Shapiro v. Thompson (1968) -- Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969).
Author: Michael Bellesiles
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250096189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
The evolution of the battle for true equality in America seen through the men, ideas, and politics behind the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments passed at the end of the Civil War. On July 4, 1852, Frederick Douglass stood in front of a crowd in Rochester, New York, and asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” The audience had invited him to speak on the day celebrating freedom, and had expected him to offer a hopeful message about America; instead, he’d offered back to them their own hypocrisy. How could the Constitution defend both freedom and slavery? How could it celebrate liberty with one hand while withdrawing it with another? Theirs was a country which promoted and even celebrated inequality. From the very beginning, American history can be seen as a battle to reconcile the large gap between America’s stated ideals and the reality of its republic. Its struggle is not one of steady progress toward greater freedom and equality, but rather for every step forward there is a step taken in a different direction. In Inventing Equality, Michael Bellesiles traces the evolution of the battle for true equality—the stories of those fighting forward, to expand the working definition of what it means to be an American citizen—from the Revolution through the late nineteenth century. He identifies the systemic flaws in the Constitution, and explores through the role of the Supreme Court and three Constitutional amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th—the ways in which equality and inequality waxed and waned over the decades.
Author: Thomas Christiano
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9781405170789
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The book I wish to write for Blackwell is a study of the philosophical foundations of the principle of equality as a principle of justice. The principle of equality is a principle of equal distribution. It is, I believe, part of the moral foundation of democracy and certain basic liberal rights as well as a foundational element in the proper principles of the distribution of wealth in society and in international society. Though equality is at the basis of a considerable amount of modern normative political thought, there is not a great deal of theorizing about the rationale for equality. There is a very large and illuminating literature on the question of what equality of distribution should be distribution of, and this bears importantly on the question of the justification of equality. In my view, however, it is absolutely necessary to inquire into the moral foundations of equality since there are many thinkers who believe that equality is not a suitable principle of justice or of morality at all. Only by showing that equality is founded in powerful considerations of morality can the current impasse in debates on the nature of justice be overcome. The debates between libertarians, desert theorists, priority theorists, utilitarians, sufficiency theorists and egalitarians cannot go much further until we have a clear idea of the basis of the principle of equality. In addition, an adequate account of the foundations of equality will help in handling some of the more important objections to the principle of equality. In particular, I think that the proper account of the basis of equality will help in responding to the leveling down objection often made against the principle of equality. There are two major exceptions to the lack of argument for equality. John Rawls argues that something like a principle of equality in the distribution of political and liberal rights as well as material resources can be defended on the basis of a hypothetical contract argument. This is a really interesting argument but it has been largely discredited in the last twenty years. Thomas Nagel has defended a principle of equality on the basis of the idea that it is more urgent to satisfy the interests of the worst off members of society than the interests of others. But Nagel does little to defend his principle of urgency and the overall argument does not seem to lead to equality as much as to a consequentialist principle of priority. My intention is to develop a set of arguments that I have been working on as a defense of equality. It is also to deal with a number of important objections to the principle of equality, in particular the leveling down objection. The argument must proceed in a number of steps. First, we need an account of the basic concept of justice. There are two elements that are central to the traditional concept of justice. One, justice consists in each person receiving his or her due. Two, relevantly like cases ought to be treated alike and unlike cases unlike. These two principles are at the basis of our understanding of justice generally. They require elaboration and defense. Second, part of the defense of a principle that requires that each receive what is due to them is an account of the moral status of persons in virtue of which something is due to them at all. The idea of the status of persons is essential to the idea of justice. And it is a notion that establishes justice as an independent moral concern that is not merely subject to consequentialist considerations. The basis of the moral status of persons is highly contested and not very well understood. I contend that a plausible account of the basis of moral status is an important plank in the argument for the principle of equality. Third, it must be argued that persons have equal moral status. The notion of equal moral status requires detailed articulation and defense. Fourth, an account of the rationale for equality must include an account of what constitutes the well being of a person. In my view, an account of the well being of persons is closely connected to the status of persons. I plan on articulating an account of the notion of well being that relates it to the moral status of persons. It will also show that what is due to human beings is that their well being be advanced. With these four elements in place, I will show, fifth, how a principle of equality of distribution can be shown to follow. This is the main conclusion of the book project. However, sixth, I also think that this argument can show how important objections to equality can be met. In particular, I think I can show how the leveling down objection to equality offered by Derek Parfit and Harry Frankfurt among others can be refuted given the argument for equality. I expect the book to have a chapter structure roughly corresponding to the six main points of the outline. I do intend to respond along the way to a number of other major objections that have been made to the principle of equality such as that of Joseph Raz, Robert Nozick and Russell Hardin. In my view, this book should be accessible to advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students. It should be quite useful in courses on distributive justice and on issues of political philosophy generally. But I also intend that it make a scholarly contribution. I think that it has been a long time since someone has tried to make a full dress argument for equality and that this work will be unique in this respect. To the extent that the principle of equality is, in my view, at the foundation of a number of important principles in political philosophy such as that of democratic equality, liberal rights and human rights more generally, this book ought to be of interest to a broad variety of political philosophers and political theorists. I have already started on this project. I am publishing a paper entitled "An Argument for Equality and Against the Leveling Down Objection," in Social Justice and the Law ed. Harry Silverstein (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005) and in "A Foundation for Equalitarianism," in Egalitarianism eds. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen and Nils Holtug (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) where I sketch some of the arguments I want eventually to develop at great length. And this work will figure in the first chapter of my forthcoming book on the foundations of democracy The Constitution of Equality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). But my intention is to develop the ideas and follow the strands of argument so as to produce a book length treatment of the issues.
