As the COVID19 pandemic and economic crises continue to ravage the country, it is increasingly clear that the virus is not just a public health challenge: it is also exposing deep systemic failures of governance, and disparities of political power. Black and brown Americans are the most likely to die from this virus, a reflection…
This post is part of our symposium on democratizing administrative law. You can find all the posts in the series here. The modern administrative state has always faced ongoing debates about the appropriate balance between administrative authority and procedural constraint. But we are in a new moment of political peril in this debate. A newfound skepticism…
This post is part of our symposium on democratizing administrative law. You can find all the posts in the series here. Economic inequality and political inequality go hand in hand. American government is empirically more responsive to wealthy citizens, who are better organized and more represented in policymaking institutions. These findings, coupled with an increasingly blatant…
Part Three: The Substantive Constitution Reconstruction, Freedom, and Nullification: The Battles over the Fourteenth Amendment In 1872, newly-emancipated and enfranchised black Republicans won a wave of elections throughout the country, including in Grant Parish, Louisiana. The election was disputed and the conflict quickly escalated into an armed standoff battle between black Republicans, who occupied the…
Part Two: The Structural Constitution The Basic Structure Suggested readings: Federalist 10, 51 Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819) Mark Tushnet, Constitutional Hardball, 37 J. Marshall L. Rev. 523, 523-26, 528-29, 535-36, 538-43 (2004) Jack Balkin & Sanford Levinson, Constitutional Crises, 157 U. Penn. L. Rev. 707,…
Part I: Constitutional Law as a Political Economic Battleground For students and scholars interested in questions of political economy, inequality, exclusion, and power, conventional black letter law classes can often be daunting. The volume of case law and the compressed time of the semester can often squeeze out more thematic and critical discussion of these…