William Forbath has a post entitled "CONSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND DILEMMAS ON THE LEFT" on LPE. Here is a taste:
Rana aims to free us from Constitution worship. An abiding faith in “redemptive” or “creedal” constitutionalism, he argues, has long held back liberals, progressives, and even “the Left” from seriously promoting major change in our structures of government. Rana’s heroes are the idol-smashers who urged Americans to scrap the Constitution and build a genuine democracy.
I think Rana greatly exaggerates how much “redemptive constitutionalism” has ever hobbled radical imagination or practical efforts for radical change. Not constitutional blinkers but violence, material asymmetries of power, and elite concessions have been the limiting factors. What’s more, the left has always done better at change-making when key figures and movements have made canny use of redemptive constitutional narratives and arguments. Rejecting that tradition leaves far too much on the table. And in his own final analysis, Rana’s democratic ethic leads him to put aside the rejectionist thrust of the book’s first several hundred pages in favor of this insight.
Read the whole thing.
