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LPE Originals

Countering the Neoliberal Structural Constitution

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This post is part of our symposium on socialist constitutionalism. The Federalist Society leverages right-wing legal change by promoting constitutional originalism as a seemingly noble and neutral foundation for neoliberal political economy.  Without a comparably accessible and compelling contrary first principle, left and centrist law and politics can appear to be a diffuse agenda of contested…
LPE Originals

The Constitution of Social Progress

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Constitutionalism sits at the commanding heights of law. That framework of governing structures, rights, and ideals shouldn’t be abandoned to right-wing and liberal-centrist construction. Socialists and progressives instead ought to embrace a constitutional vision in which legislative and executive power give effect to the spirit of democratic equality that underlies but outruns the Constitution’s text.
LPE Originals

Socialism Past and Future – or Socialism is Past, and the Future?

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In Forbath’s telling, Weimar is not a cautionary tale but an opportunity for a do over. There’s much to like, and learn, from rekindling this vision of social democracy. In what follows, I invite other characters to this story, drawing from Mexico’s constitutional history, and raise a few questions about the limits of the social democratic bequest as a compass for our imagination.
LPE Originals

The Relevance of Weimar

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Willy Forbath’s return to the Weimar Constitution is inspiring. I will just point out of a couple of limits to turning back to it in the present — limits that strike me as difficult to overcome.
LPE Originals

Socialism Past and Future (Part II of II)

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In my last post, I began a discussion of the Weimar Constitution as one of the first constitutions containing provisions for social and economic rights (SER), and perhaps the very first one, in which socialists had an important hand drafting and expounding. The literature on constitutional SER misses a great deal when it casts the Weimar Constitution as a weak, infant version of later SER constitutions, which grew stronger over time.