The Rise and Fall of the American Constitutional Model w/ Aziz Rana

A series featuring Aziz Rana, the incoming J. Donald Monan, S.J., professor of law and government at Boston College, based on his book The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them.

---

Episode 1

In this first episode, the group discusses the latest Supreme Court ruling as of the recording date (Trump v. Anderson), how America’s treatment of its constitution compares with those of other nations, the Constitution’s development in the country’s first century, debates around the document in the Civil War and Reconstruction, and more through WWI.

Episode 2

Picks things up in the era of Woodrow Wilson and the beginning of the security state, how WWI affected American’s views of the Constitution, FDR’s relationship with consitutionalism, the “rediscovery” of the Bill of Rights, the advent of the American right wing and its approach to the Constitution, and more through the mid-20th century.

Episode 3

Continues with a focus on the postwar period, exploring how the document became an economic document as well as a political one, the rise of the courts, the tyranny of the majority, the Civil Rights Act, and more.

Episode 4

This final episode explores how economic transformations affected attempts at constitutional reform in the 70s, the rise of originalism, judges and Supreme Court justices as political actors, flaws in interpretation vs. within the text itself, elites’ influence on judicial review, structural barriers to large-scale constitutional change, and how we might organize and shape politics to make the necessary reforms possible.