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We are going to be in a generational struggle against the trifecta of an unrepresentative Senate, a majority-canceling Electoral College, and a lifetime-appointed Supreme Court. @nick_copel/1485640558647390213Permalink On twitter.com
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We're seeing the culmination of a generation of efforts by the Right to engineer the Supreme Court into a brake on the emerging social democratic politics of a multiracial and economically unequal America.Permalink On twitter.com
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The current Supreme Court majority is a system of zombie rule by a declining, former majority that is structured to constrain and defang policies desired by the majority of Americans, and occasionally passed into law by a multiracial but elite-controlled Democratic Party.Permalink On twitter.com
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To fight this battle, we must divest ourselves of the notion that the Supreme Court, the Founding Fathers, and the current Constitution are sacred.Permalink On twitter.com
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Only rarely has the Court marched ahead of society in the fight for greater justice; mostly it has played a role of cementing widespread changes already underway or even worse standing in the way of transformative progress and rolling back critical protections.Permalink On twitter.com
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The "Founders" didn't know better than us. Virtually every other country in the world has written a new constitution since 1945 Collective notions of human rights have dramatically expanded worldwide. Get over your allegiance to these institutions and the Constitution.Permalink On twitter.com
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Our Constitution isn't sacred; it's a relic whose relevance was extended by mid-century Supreme Court decisions that crafted arguments for a fraction of the rights that most of the rest of the world takes for granted.Permalink On twitter.com
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Given the structurally anti-majoritarian nature of the Senate and Electoral College and the fiasco of 2010s Supreme Court appointments, we will have a choice between prolonged trench battles over constitutional revisions and a mass social explosion to replace it entirely.Permalink On twitter.com
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I would argue that our current situation is akin to neoliberal Bolivia and Chile, or apartheid South Africa, all of which negotiated a full redraft of their constitutions to enable majority rule, expanded rights for humans, and fewer rights for elites.On twitter.com
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To do so, they built power to shut the country down. Of course that same power can also fight and demand existing institutions do the work within the existing framework.Permalink On twitter.com
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But make no mistake, either way, rights making is a social battle, not an argument about the proper reading of a late eighteenth century political text.Permalink On twitter.com
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(a more inside-the-beltway version of this argument from 2020: woborders.blog/2021/05/17/how-to-survive-and-outflank-justice-amy-coney-barrett/)Permalink On twitter.com