| This dissertation offers a set of interlocking arguments about American rights and constitutionalism fleshed out in a study of four critical junctures: the late colonial and Revolutionary period (1700--1776); the state and national founding (1776--1789); the period spanning the anti-slavery movement, Fourteenth Amendment, and Reconstruction (1830--1880); and the civil rights movement and 1964 Civil Rights Act (1900--1964).; I begin by addressing the liberal-communitarian debate in contemporary political theory. American history reveals that communitarians' depiction of liberalism and rights as excessively metaphysical and individualistic, and treatment of liberalism and republicanism as necessarily antagonistic traditions, is deeply flawed. Our national past is informed by a nuanced version of liberalism which is closely entangled with republican values of self-government, and our constitutional rights are hybrid rights reflecting both liberal and republican values, and incorporating and combining individual and collective protections and moral and positive rights.; My second, related concern, is with the role of history in interpreting constitutional rights. I reject the strict originalist argument that rights must be interpreted according to the intentions of the Constitution's framers and ratifiers, showing that this theory is premised on mischaracterizations of American constitutional rights and history. However, because the meaning of our constitutional rights is partially constituted by our history, they cannot be interpreted through abstract reason alone, but should be interpreted through a soft, critical originalism that recognizes its own limitations and takes account of a much broader range of history.; My final argument deals with the process of constitutional change and the transformation of constitutional rights. While most scholars treat this as a primarily top-down phenomenon, focusing on the role of political elites, particularly the Supreme Court, I tell a more complicated story. Major shifts in constitutional rights are generated by an interaction between social movements and political leaders. Popular movements provide the catalyst for rights transformation, parlaying their social energy into political action by employing "rights talk" as a form of immanent criticism to win the support of a critical mass of the broader public and/or political elites.; These arguments are developed in my study of constitutional rights and rights talk during four critical historical periods. |
