The New Roberts Court, Donald Trump, and Our Failing Constitution

ISBN-13: 9783319564500 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 274 str.

Stephen M. Feldman

Opis

This book traces the evolution of the constitutional order, explaining Donald Trump's election as a symptom of a degraded democratic-capitalist system. Beginning with the framers' vision of a balanced system--balanced between the public and private spheres, between government power and individual rights--the constitutional order evolved over two centuries until it reached its present stage, Democracy, Inc., in which corporations and billionaires wield herculean political power. The five conservative justices of the early Roberts Court, including the late Antonin Scalia, stamped Democracy, Inc., with a constitutional imprimatur, contravening the framers' vision while simultaneously claiming to follow the Constitution's original meaning. The justices believed they were upholding the American way of life, but they instead placed our democratic-capitalist system in its gravest danger since World War II. With Neil Gorsuch replacing Scalia, the new Court must choose: Will it follow the early Roberts Court in approving and bolstering Democracy, Inc., or will it restore the crucial balance between the public and private spheres in our constitutional system?

Spis treści

Chapter 1: Introduction: Democracy, Inc., and the Betrayal of the Constitution 1

Part I: The Foundation for a Balanced Structure 15

Chapter 2: The Constitutional Framing: Republican Democracy, Private Property, and Free

Expression 15

The Revolutionary Background 18

Experience Defeats Idealism 22

The Nature of the Citizen-Self 24

Republican Democratic Government and the Public Sphere 30

Property and the Private Sphere 33

Balancing the Public and Private 44

Free Speech and a Free Press 55

Part II: The Transformation of the Constitutional System 63

Chapter 3: Republican Democracy Evolves: Corporations and Laissez Faire 63

Chapter 4: Pluralist Democracy Saves the United States and Invigorates Free Expression 80

American Democracy Transforms: Reconciling the Public and Private 81

Pluralist Democratic Theory: Free Expression Becomes a Constitutional Lodestar 94

Chapter 5: Pluralist Democracy Evolves: Free Expression, Judicial Conservatism, and the Cold

War 97

The Early-Cold War, Free Expression, and Moral Clarity 98

The Flip Side of the Cold War: Liberty and Equality in an Emerging Consumers’

Democracy 104

Civil Rights and Democracy 104

Capitalism and Democracy 109

Chapter 6: Democracy, Inc., and the End of the Cold War 123

The Rise of Democracy, Inc.: An Attack on Government 125

The Early Roberts Court in Democracy, Inc. 139

Statutory and Other Non-constitutional Cases 141

Free-Expression and Other Constitutional Cases 144

Part III: The Early and New Roberts Courts 153

Chapter 7: Constitution Betrayed: The Endangerment of the American Democratic-Capitalist

System 153

The Framing and Originalism 154

Social and Political Theory 158

The Practical Effects of Laissez Faire in History 171

Chapter 8: Will We Save the American Constitutional System? 175

O autorze

Stephen M. Feldman is Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School, USA, and has been the Jerry W. Housel/Carl F. Arnold Distinguished Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Wyoming, USA, since 2002. He has authored four scholarly books on Constitutional law and American legal thought, edited an anthology on law and religion, and written more than sixty articles and essay contributions on law, politics, and jurisprudence.