Civic Duties and Cultural Change

What duties do Americans owe the state? Today, this question seems almost incomprehensible. Compulsions in the common interest are received coolly in our rights-obsessed culture, and the Supreme Court has never announced a framework for identifying the burdens of citizenship. This Article corrects the historical record by documenting how civic duties have developed over time. The evidence reveals that these obligations are constantly in motion; society has constructed, reshaped, and discarded them in decades-long struggles over the meaning of freedom. Put simply, the duties of citizenship are not fixed features of our constitutional order.