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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.
LPE Originals

The Unavoidable Consequences of Being Human

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Next month, the Supreme Court will decide whether it is constitutional for cities to punish unsheltered people for sleeping outside, even when the city fails to provide any safe alternative. Yet, no matter how the court rules, homeless people will still face significant threats from cities.
LPE Originals

Radical Constitutionalism and a Critique of Nonviolence

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The most important work of legal scholarship in some time, Jocelyn Simonson’s Radical Acts of Justice raises, but does not develop, two major sets of questions. The first concerns the role of the Constitution in freedom struggles; the second, the legitimate role (if any) of violence in transformative left politics in the United States.
LPE Originals

A Netchoice Win Would Be a Loss for Democracy

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A ruling that tech companies don’t have to comply with neutral regulations would not just block two sloppy laws, it would put a block on politics itself. This is a moment for the Court to stand back and allow democracy to work its clumsy, painful magic.
LPE Originals

Abolitionism as a Question of Citizenship

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The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments extended citizenship to formerly enslaved persons. But what did this status entail? In the subsequent political debates over abolition, one view carried the day: a contract and property-based notion of citizenship that fortified rather than unsettled antebellum era social relations. To realize the promise of Reconstruction today, we need a bolder vision of citizenship, one rooted not in marketplace imaginaries but in the elusive yet powerful concept of human dignity.
LPE Originals

Territorial Labor and the Political Economy of American Empire

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From Afro-Diasporic laborers building the Panama Canal to contemporary Micronesians trafficked to work in Iowa’s pork industry, the labors of “territorial peoples” have been central to America’s economic rise. This often overlooked history is both an indictment of our constitutional tradition and a harbinger of the tactics of legal disempowerment deployed against labor writ large.
LPE Originals

No One Court Should Have All That Power

By LPE Editors

Here’s the terrifying reality: our power-hungry, ultra-conservative Supreme Court will stifle attempts by the government to address climate change, gun violence, racial inequality, and many other pressing problems. Democrats, meanwhile, are unlikely to win back control of the Court until 2065. Given this, it’s past time to take seriously the following question: what to do about the courts? Thankfully, we have just the open course for you.
LPE Originals

Students for Justice in Palestine, Governors for Authoritarianism in Florida

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In late October, Florida banned chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine from operating on state university campuses. This ban, which alleges that the national organization provided material support to designated terrorist organizations, is unlikely to survive judicial scrutiny. Nevertheless, it represents a dangerous escalation of recent efforts to restrict the speech of pro-Palestine advocates, while providing a blueprint for the future repression of other disfavored groups.
LPE Originals

Cruel, But Not Unusual, Market Foundations

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Private equity firms, cloaked under protective securities laws, have increasingly acquired companies that provide goods and services in U.S. jails and prisons. But it is the legal construction of prisoners’ rights that has enabled this market to take the particular form that it has, turning community ties into steady payment streams. In particular, Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, which has affirmed the constitutionality of pay-to-stay fees, has transformed the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment into a (subordinating) right to credit.
LPE Originals

Jackson, Mississippi, and the Contested Boundaries of Self-Governance

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This past year, Jackson has been the site of two separate yet related crises: a failed water system that has left approximately 150,000 residents without access to safe drinking water, and the takeover of the city’s police and court functions by white officials in the state government. Assessed together, these two episodes offer lessons about the challenges of local self-governance in a country awash with material inequality and the importance of pursuing political equality across as well as within jurisdictions.