The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution

Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy

The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution
Joseph Fishkin, William E Forbath
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Hardback
h235 x 156mm - 640pg
25 Feb 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780674980624
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A bold call to reclaim an American tradition that argues the Constitution imposes a duty on government to fight oligarchy and ensure broadly shared wealth. Oligarchy is a threat to the American republic. When too much economic and political power is concentrated in too few hands, we risk losing the "republican form of government" the Constitution requires. Today, courts enforce the Constitution as if it had almost nothing to say about this threat. But as Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath show in this revolutionary retelling of constitutional history, a commitment to prevent oligarchy once stood at the center of a robust tradition in American political and constitutional thought. Fishkin and Forbath demonstrate that reformers, legislators, and even judges working in this "democracy-of-opportunity" tradition understood that the Constitution imposes a duty on legislatures to thwart oligarchy and promote a broad distribution of wealth and political power. These ideas led Jacksonians to fight special economic privileges for the few, Populists to try to break up monopoly power, and Progressives to fight for the constitutional right to form a union. During Reconstruction, Radical Republicans argued in this tradition that racial equality required breaking up the oligarchy of the Slave Power and distributing wealth and opportunity to former slaves and their descendants. President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Dealers built their politics around this tradition, winning the fight against the "economic royalists" and "industrial despots. " But today, as we enter a new Gilded Age, this tradition in progressive American economic and political thought lies dormant. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution begins the work of recovering it and exploring its profound implications for our deeply unequal society and badly damaged democracy.
An important and stirring achievement. In this gold mine of historical discovery and legal insight, Fishkin and Forbath recover and renew the lost Constitution of strong democratic opportunity for all. The authors not only restore a political understanding of economic relationships in American society but return Constitutional values and ideals to their appropriately central place in American politics. -- Congressman Jamie Raskin From the earliest years of our nation, Americans have understood that too great a concentration of economic power is fatal to democracy. In this important and timely book, Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath tell the story of the democracy-of-opportunity tradition from the Founding to the present. And they show why its revival is crucial to halt democracy' s decay in our Second Gilded Age. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution restores political economy to its rightful place in American constitutional theory. -- Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School Fishkin and Forbath have made a fundamental contribution to constitutional understanding. They have put America' s current crisis into historical perspective in a way that brilliantly illuminates our current predicament. They have also provided a framework for reconstructing our constitutional tradition to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Their book deserves serious consideration by thoughtful Americans engaged in the larger effort to reinvigorate the democratic foundations of our Republic. -- Bruce Ackerman, Yale University After decades during which conservatives have dominated deliberation about the Constitution, The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution is the book we need. It reminds progressives that constitutional claims were not, in our history, ' conversation-stoppers,' but rather the stuff of politics itself. Conservatives talk constantly about what the Constitution requires, and Fishkin and Forbath are right that we need ' a comparably robust progressive account of what kind of community the Constitution promises to secure for all. ' Their proposal-an emphasis on ' constitutional restraints against oligarchy,' a ' political economy that sustains a robust middle class,' and ' a constitutional principle of inclusion' -will move progressives from defense to an unflinching campaign on behalf of a more just and more democratic society. May this exciting book receive the wide attention it deserves and shake up our dangerously ossified constitutional argument. -- E. J. Dionne, Jr. , author of Code Red and Our Divided Political Heart This book is a monumental accomplishment. Its brilliant retelling of American history traces three strands of thought about ' constitutional political economy' -anti-oligarchy, the indispensability of a broad and open middle class, and racial inclusion-as they appear, converge, diverge, and sometimes go to war with each other from the Founding forward. Along the way, Fishkin and Forbath illuminate the very different way earlier generations thought about the Constitution-as something like the socioeconomic and institutional foundations of a self-governing republic, and thus as a source of legislative obligations as well as constraints on legislative power. The book is richly instructive for the present moment, and beckons us to live up to the worthiest aspirations of multiple generations of ' founders' by weaving together the three strands of the anti-oligarchy tradition. -- Cynthia Estlund, New York University School of Law Want to fight oligarchy in America? In this fascinating and brilliant reconstruction of American constitutional thought, Fishkin and Forbath show how economic freedom and constitutional freedom used to be intertwined in public thought, and how they got separated-with devastating results. Part mystery story (how did we get here? ), and part call to arms, their book is a must-read for all people ready for a new democracy of meaningful opportunity. -- Zephyr Teachout, Fordham Law School
Joseph Fishkin is Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. He spent a decade at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the Marrs McLean Professor in Law. He is the author of Bottlenecks: A New Theory of Equal Opportunity. William E. Forbath holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair in Law and is Associate Dean for Research at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780674980624
Published: 25 Feb 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: Harvard University Press
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Format: Hardback
Height: 235mm
Width: 156mm
Pages: 640

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