In the summer of 1854, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society sent out word of a large gathering to be held at Harmony Grove in Framingham—sixteen miles from Boston—on the Fourth of July. For fifty cents, picnickers were offered “Special Trains” to and from the grounds.

In his essay Frederick Douglass and the Two Constitutions, Professor David Blight explores the constitutional thought of the nineteenth century’s great human rights advocate, statesman, and orator, Frederick Douglass. How should we understand, he asks, Douglass’s arrival at a natural rights interpretation of the 1787 Constitution?

Even in a century notable for oratory, Frederick Douglass’s capacities as an orator were astonishing. He was a master of words, whether spoken or written.

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this symposium. I want to thank David Blight, in particular, for this rich and provocative Essay. It was fascinating for me to learn that he has come over to the position of my friends James Oakes and Sean Wilentz, with whom I have argued about the concept of the antislavery American Constitution.

Born a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland and spending the first twenty years of his life in bondage, Frederick Douglass possessed no conventional education. He did not spend a single day of his life in schools of any kind. His “education” came from people around him, from books, from journalism, from wide reading, and finally, from his personal experience and relationships.

In his Jorde lecture, Professor Steven Levitsky offers an important account of the nation at a crossroads. Down one path is a thriving multiracial democracy; down the other lies democracy’s demise. To avoid the latter path, Levitsky presses the need for major institutional reform, including constitutional amendments to change the structure of the United States…

American democracy faces profound challenges in our era. Some of these challenges stem from features in the institutional design of democracy that are hard-wired into the Constitution; those challenges, unique to the United States, are the ones Steven Levitsky focused on in his provocative lecture. But other major challenges confronting American democracy are common to…

Many, many thanks to the Brennan Center and to Berkeley Law for the invitation to speak at this event. It’s really an honor to be here as part of the series, and also with this really distinguished…

This nation is not now, never has been and now never will be a white country. – James Baldwin. We live in an anxious era, particularly about the possibility of multiethnic democracy. The…

America’s frozen constitution could well be the world’s most difficult to amend. Far from being a badge of honor, the distinction of topping the global charts on constitutional rigidity is cause for alarm. Ancient and virtually impervious to amendment, the United States Constitution has withstood all modern efforts to renovate its outdated architecture on elections…

In this brief Essay, I present six comments to Steven Levitsky’s lecture. I suggest that the author (1) clarify some of the basic concepts he uses in his text, particularly the concept of democracy; (2) not confuse the problems of democracy with the problems of constitutionalism; (3) take more centrally into account the problem imposed on our democracies by the existence of profound…

A silver lining of recent migration crises is increased reliance on responsibility-sharing arrangements in international actor responses. This new experience allows for evidence-based analysis of such arrangements. We distinguish between progressive arrangements—ones that shift responsibilities to more affluent, institutionally…

International lawyers have been preoccupied with refugee responsibility sharing for decades, and with good reason. They have invested energy both in critiquing the existing regime and developing proposals for alternatives. However, the corresponding literature has largely, though not entirely, neglected two related but distinct phenomena: imperial domination and imperial intervention. I argue that attention to imperial domination and imperial intervention, which I define shortly, should unsettle the very frame of responsibility sharing and even asylum for many who are coerced into migration.

To be forced to move from a beloved home is a tragedy, no matter the cause. But such moves need not end tragically. Though the wounds of losing a homeland may never fully heal, people with the strength and resilience necessary to withstand these kinds of moves are also often well-equipped to build something positive out of pain. They can be tremendous assets to others in their newfound homes.

The international community has long recognized the principle that countries should share responsibility for hosting and supporting refugees. The 2018 Global Compact on Refugees’ recognition of an “urgent need” for greater responsibility sharing across borders reflects widespread agreement that the existing distribution of…

Responsibility sharing was a central commitment in the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. It was also a key commitment in the preamble to the landmark 1951 Refugee Convention, in which countries of first asylum were promised “international cooperation” in return for providing refuge—though the Convention…

Border control is often seen as the last bastion of sovereignty. The term conjures up images of fortified walls and barbed wire separating one country from another. These fortifications determine access; entry can easily be denied to those on the other side. Defensive walls date back to prehistoric times. Think of Gilgamesh’s Uruk or the…

The “countermajoritarian difficulty” was a central preoccupation for twentieth-century constitutional law scholars.1 Alexander Bickel, who coined the phrase in The Least Dangerous Branch, located that difficulty institutionally in the courts. Judicial review, he wrote, involved the “reality that when the Supreme Court declares unconstitutional a legislative act or the action of an…

In her Jorde Lecture, Pam Karlan paints a grim picture of American democracy under siege. Together, the malapportioned Senate, the obsolete Electoral College, rampant voter suppression and gerrymandering, and a Supreme Court happy to greenlight these practices threaten the very notion of majority rule. I share Karlan’s bleak assessment. I’m also skeptical that conventional tools…

Writing about the countermajoritarian difficulty is a rite of passage for constitutional law scholars. Indeed, the sheer number of articles that have discussed the countermajoritarian difficulty have corroborated that this phenomenon was, and continues to be, a “central preoccupation” and a “central obsession” of constitutional law scholarship. Coined by Professor Alexander…