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LPE Originals

Venerating Constitutional Veneration?

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Aziz Rana’s The Constitutional Bind provides a vital resource for appreciating how the American ideology of constitutional reverence was constructed. Yet insofar as Rana blames such an ideology for thwarting essential democratic reform, we might wonder whether this magisterial work ironically gives its subject too much credit — venerating the very constitutional veneration that it deconstructs.
LPE Originals

On Garrison, Douglass, and American Colonialism

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In aiming to unsettle the dominant constitutional faith to forge a wholly different constitutional future, The Constitutional Bind sets its sights breathtakingly high. Whether the book reaches those heights will likely turn on whether it offers a viable path from our creedal constitutional present to such a utopian future.
LPE Originals

Constitutional Politics and Dilemmas on the Left

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Aziz Rana aims to free us from Constitution worship. An abiding faith in “redemptive” constitutionalism, his new book argues, has long held back liberals, progressives, and even the Left from seriously promoting major change in our structures of government. Yet key left figures and movements have always made canny use of redemptive constitutional narratives and arguments. Rejecting that tradition leaves far too much on the table.
LPE Originals

Toward a New Constitutional Politics

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Given the manifest flaws of the U.S. Constitution, how did Americans come to idolize this document? Aziz Rana kicks off a symposium on his new book, The Constitutional Bind, by reflecting on the path that led to our current political predicament, and how long-buried Left thinking about state and economy might help us find our way out of it.