ACS Book Talk: Dollars for Life

 

The American Constitution Society hosted a conversation with Mary Zeigler, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law and author of Dollars for Life: The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Fall of the Republican Establishment. The author was in conversation with Lindsay Langholz, ACS Senior Director of Policy and Program.

Legal historian Mary Ziegler traces how the anti-abortion movement helped to forge and later upend the alliance between conservative Christianity and big business—two things so closely identified with the contemporary GOP that we hardly notice the strangeness of the pairing. Beginning with the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo, right-to-lifers fought to gain political power by changing how campaign spending--and the First Amendment--work. The anti-abortion movement helped to revolutionize the rules of money in U.S. politics and persuaded conservative voters to fixate on the federal courts. Ziegler offers a surprising new view of the slow drift to extremes in American politics--and explains how it had everything to do with the strange intersection of right-to-life politics and campaign spending.

You can purchase Dollars for Life here, or at your local bookseller.

Reviving Progressive Constitutional Political Economy Conference at Georgetown University Law Center

For most of our history, when Americans argued and fought about how to organize our political economy—the role of government, the extent and reach of redistribution, the tension between democracy and concentrated private wealth and power—advocates on all sides of these questions made constitutional arguments. For generations, a main current in American constitutional thought held that oligarchy—too much economic and political power concentrated in too few hands—threatens the “Republican form of government” at the heart of the Constitution.

The main arenas for all these constitutional arguments were the political branches and the public sphere. Today, the dominant mode of constitutional argument is different: it is far more focused on—and far more deferential to—the Supreme Court, which is now busy reviving the reactionary, anti-redistributive outlook of the Lochner Era.

Spurred by the publication of Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath’s book The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Economic Foundations of American Democracy (Harvard 2022), this conference brings together cutting-edge thinkers and scholars working in a variety of areas to explore what it would mean to put constitutional arguments at the core of Law & Political Economy (LPE), and to return political economy arguments to the heart of constitutional politics.

This conference explores the provocative question: what if we revived this progressive tradition of constitutional political economy? What work could anti-oligarchy principles and arguments do in our current moment? How can legislators, executive branch officials, and ordinary Americans draw on these traditions to challenge and counter, check and balance an out-of-control Supreme Court?

Schedule of Events
Introductions
9:30 – 9:45 a.m.

Panel I: Is it a Good Idea to Constitutionalize Political Economy?
9:45 – 11:30 a.m.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., Distinguished University Professor, Georgetown University

Willy Forbath, Lloyd M. Bentsen Chair in Law; Associate Dean for Research, UT Austin Law

Caroline Frederickson, Distinguished Visitor from Practice, Georgetown University Law Center

Michael Kazin, Professor of History, Georgetown University

Sabeel Rahman, Associate Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School

Bertrall Ross, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law; Director, Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, UVA Law

Coffee Break
11:30 – 11:45 a.m.

Panel II: Legislative & Administrative Constitutional Political Economy
11:45 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Josh Chafetz, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Ryan Doerfler, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Victoria Nourse, Ralph V. Whitworth Professor in Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Ganesh Sitaraman, New York Alumni Chancellor's Chair in Law; Director, Program in Law and Government, Vanderbilt Law School

Lunch
1:30 – 2:15 p.m.

Keynote Speech
2:15 – 2:45 p.m.

Jamie Raskin, U.S. Representative, Maryland's 8th Congressional District

Panel III: New Directions in Constitutional Political Economy
3:00 – 4:45 p.m.

Yochai Benkler, Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman Professor for Entrepreneurial Legal Studies; Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School

Sanjukta Paul, Professor of Law, Michigan Law

Brishen Rogers, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Dorian Warren, President, Community Change

Felicia Wong, President and CEO, Roosevelt Institute

ACS Book Talk: No More Police

 

Join the American Constitution Society for a conversation with Andrea Ritchie, co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization and co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition. The author will be in conversation with Dean Spade, Patricia Wismer Professor for Gender and Diversity Studies and Professor of Law at University of Seattle School of Law.

Along with her co-author Mariame Kaba, Ritchie details why policing doesn’t stop violence, but instead perpetuates widespread harm. No More Police outlines the many failures of contemporary police reforms and explore demands to defund police, divest from policing, and invest in community resources to create greater safety through a Black feminist lens. Centering survivors of state, interpersonal, and community-based violence, and highlighting uprisings, campaigns, and community-based projects,  No More Police  makes a compelling case for a world where the tools required to prevent, interrupt, and transform violence in all its forms are abundant.

You can purchase No More Police here, or at your local bookseller.

Merrill v. Milligan: The Latest Threat to the Voting Rights Act

 

The Alabama state legislature has consistently denied Black Alabamians the right to elect candidates of their choice. The state’s only majority-Black district was only first created in 1992, following a successful legal challenge under Section 2 of the Voting Right Act. On October 4, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Merrill v. Milligan, a redistricting case out of Alabama that will allow the Court, which has already substantially weakened the VRA over the past decade, to revisit and potentially further curtail the protections of Section 2 amid growing threats to our democracy.

How will the outcome of this case impact the future of political representation for marginalized communities, majority-minority districts, and litigation seeking redress of voting rights violations? What tools do courts have to rectify the dilution of Black voters’ electoral power, and other marginalized groups’ power, and what tools should they have to address this problem? On Thursday, September 29 the American Constitution Society and the Southern Poverty Law Center convened a briefing on this important case.

Featuring

Pema Levy, Reporter, Mother Jones (moderator)

Bradley E. Heard, Deputy Legal Director for Voting, Southern Poverty Law Center

Evan Milligan, Executive Director, Alabama Forward, and named respondent in Merrill v. Milligan

Samantha Kelty, Staff Attorney, Native American Rights Fund

Bertrall Ross, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, University of Virginia School of Law

National Supreme Court Preview 2022-2023

 

On September 15, 2022, ACS convened its Annual Supreme Court Preview for the 2022-2023 Term. After the seismic decisions handed down last Term, all eyes will be on the Court this fall to see what may come next. The Preview featured a diverse group of constitutional and legal experts offering their insights into the upcoming Supreme Court Term that begins on October 3, 2022.

Welcome Remarks

Russ Feingold, ACS President

Speakers

Adam Liptak, Supreme Court Correspondent, The New York Times (moderator)

Deborah Archer, President, ACLU; Professor of Clinical Law and Co-Faculty Director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, NYU School of Law

Jonathan Diaz, Senior Legal Counsel, Campaign Legal Center

Kent Greenfield, Professor and Dean’s Distinguished Scholar, Boston College Law School

Wenona Singel, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center, Michigan State University College of Law

Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Samuel Weiss Faculty Scholar; and Clinical Professor of Law, Penn State Law

The American Constitution Society is a State Bar of California approved CLE provider. This event has been approved for 1.5 hours of California MCLE credit. Please click here for the Reading Materials, Evaluation Form, Record of Attendance, and Certificate of Attendance.