The Constitutional Bind : How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rana, Aziz.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Constitutional history--United States.

Constitutional history.

Democracy--United States--History--20th century.

Democracy.

Political culture--United States--History--20th century.

Political culture.

Social movements--United States--History--20th century.

Social movements.

United States--Politics and government--20th century.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (818 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2024.

Summary:

"Americans today are increasingly uneasy about the democratic weaknesses of their federal Constitution. But for most of living memory that very Constitution has been idealized as near perfect. How could it be that this flawed system came to enjoy such intense veneration? In a striking reinterpretation of the American constitutional past, Aziz Rana connects the spread of a distinctive twentieth century American relationship to its founding document to another development rarely treated alongside it: the rise of the U.S. to global dominance. In the process, he highlights the role of constitutional veneration in shaping the terms of American power abroad, with ultimately transformative effects at home for narratives of nation and ideas of reform. In the process, Rana also explores the remarkably diverse array of movement activists-in Black, Indigenous, feminist, labor, and immigrant politics-that struggled to imagine a very different constitutional horizon, one grounded in equal and effective freedom for all and able to overcome the basic limitations of the consolidating legal-political system. These voices of opposition, including to the Constitution itself, have overwhelmingly been excised from constitutional memory. And yet they offer essential insights for making sense of our present difficulties, in which Americans find themselves bereft of the constitutional sureties that have long shaped collective life"-- Provided by the publisher.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Preface: Three Centennials

1: The American Constitutional Romance

I : Disagreement and Experimentation in the Gilded Age, 1887-1917

2: Settler Crisis and Constitutional Uncertainty

3: Class Narratives and the High Tide of "Constitution Tinkering"

4: The Socialist Constitutional Alternative

5: Developing Universalist Empire in the Philippines

II : The Spread of a New Constitutional Citizenship, 1917-1945

6: World War I, the Security State, and Constitutional Loyalty

7: Inclusion and Exclusion in Interwar Americanism

8: Transformation and Preservation in the New Deal

9: The Good War and Constitution Worship

III : Consolidating the American Model, 1945-1965

10: Launching the American Century

11: Red Scare Constitutionalism

12: Cold War Reform and the Reframing of American Identity

13: Constitutional Myths and the Victory of the Court

IV: Alternative Paths and Constitutional Erasure, 1965-1987

14: Left Resurgence and the Decolonial Project

15: The Rise of Originalist America

Conclusion: Constitutional Accounting

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-226-35086-X

OCLC:

1419871458