Tushnet on the Rights Revolution

I attended this workshop yesterday--great discussion.  I am reposting because there was a problem with the link--which has now been fixed.

Mark Tushnet will present The Rights Revolution in the Twentieth Centuryat a faculty workshop at Georgetown University Law Center Today (now Yesterday).  Here is a taste:

The idea of rights has been central to U.S. political and constitutional discourse from the beginning. The Declaration of Independence appealed to “inalienable rights,” and the first amendments to the Constitution were universally described as a bill of rights. Yet, something distinctive appears to have happened to the idea of rights over the course of the twentieth century.

The idea of rights operates on several levels. Rights are part of U.S. culture, and part of political theory. On those levels the idea of rights is sometimes quite abstract, and contradictions among the rights that are valued culturally and developed in theory can be quite persistent. Rights are brought home when they become legal rights. The changes in the idea of rights on which this essay focuses are changes on the level of law.

Changes occurred in ideas and institutions. Simplifying an account that will be developed in more complexity below: At the outset of the twentieth century the prevailing idea of rights defined them with reference to the doctrines of classical liberalism with its emphasis on choice and contract in the market, supplemented by an ideal of equality expressed in hostility to class legislation that departed from neutral treatment of all groups in the economy and society. At the end of the century rights were associated with a modern liberalism adding to the classical liberal account a concern for individual autonomy in all spheres of life, supplemented by a more substantive ideal of equality that extended, again, into all spheres of life.

Highly recommended.  Download it while its hot!