The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution

Fishkin and Forbath have made a fundamental contribution to constitutional understanding. They have put America's current crisis into historical perspective in a way that brilliantly illuminates our current predicament. They have also provided a framework for reconstructing our constitutional tradition to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. Their book deserves serious consideration by thoughtful Americans engaged in the larger effort to reinvigorate the democratic foundations of our Republic. -Bruce Ackerman, Yale University After decades during which conservatives have dominated deliberation about the Constitution, The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution is the book we need. It reminds progressives that constitutional claims were not, in our history, 'conversation-stoppers,' but rather the stuff of politics itself. Conservatives talk constantly about what the Constitution requires, and Fishkin and Forbath are right that we need 'a comparably robust progressive account of what kind of community the Constitution promises to secure for all.' Their proposal-an emphasis on 'constitutional restraints against oligarchy,' a 'political economy that sustains a robust middle class,' and 'a constitutional principle of inclusion'-will move progressives from defense to an unflinching campaign on behalf of a more just and more democratic society. May this exciting book receive the wide attention it deserves and shake up our dangerously ossified constitutional argument. -E. J. Dionne, Jr., author of Code Red and Our Divided Political Heart This book is a monumental accomplishment. Its brilliant retelling of American history traces three strands of thought about 'constitutional political economy'-anti-oligarchy, the indispensability of a broad and open middle class, and racial inclusion-as they appear, converge, diverge, and sometimes go to war with each other from the Founding forward. Along the way, Fishkin and Forbath illuminate the very different way earlier generations thought about the Constitution-as something like the socioeconomic and institutional foundations of a self-governing republic, and thus as a source of legislative obligations as well as constraints on legislative power. The book is richly instructive for the present moment, and beckons us to live up to the worthiest aspirations of multiple generations of 'founders' by weaving together the three strands of the anti-oligarchy tradition. -Cynthia Estlund, New York University School of Law From the earliest years of our nation, Americans have understood that too great a concentration of economic power is fatal to democracy. In this important and timely book, Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath tell the story of the democracy-of-opportunity tradition from the Founding to the present. And they show why its revival is crucial to halt democracy's decay in our Second Gilded Age. The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution restores political economy to its rightful place in American constitutional theory. -Jack M. Balkin, Yale Law School