{"product_id":"the-constitutional-bind-how-americans-came-to-idolize-a-document-that-fails-them-9780226350721","title":"The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn eye-opening account of how Americans came to revere the Constitution and what this reverence has meant domestically and around the world.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Some Americans today worry that the Federal Constitution is ill-equipped to respond to mounting democratic threats and may even exacerbate the worst features of American politics. Yet for as long as anyone can remember, the Constitution has occupied a quasi-mythical status in American political culture, which ties ideals of liberty and equality to assumptions about the inherent goodness of the text's design. \u003ci\u003eThe Constitutional Bind\u003c\/i\u003e explores how a flawed document came to be so glorified and how this has impacted American life. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e In a pathbreaking retelling of the American experience, Aziz Rana shows that today's reverential constitutional culture is a distinctively twentieth-century phenomenon. Rana connects this widespread idolization to another relatively recent development: the rise of US global dominance. Ultimately, such veneration has had far-reaching consequences: despite offering a unifying language of reform, it has also unleashed an interventionist national security state abroad while undermining the possibility of deeper change at home. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Revealing how the current constitutional order was forged over the twentieth century, \u003ci\u003eThe Constitutional Bind\u003c\/i\u003e also sheds light on an array of movement activists--in Black, Indigenous, feminist, labor, and immigrant politics--who struggled to imagine different constitutional horizons. As time passed, these voices of opposition were excised from memory. Today, they offer essential insights. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAziz Rana\u003c\/b\u003e is the incoming J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government at Boston College. His writing has appeared in the \u003ci\u003eWashington Post, Dissent, n+1, \u003c\/i\u003ethe \u003ci\u003eBoston Review\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eJacobin\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eTwo Faces of American Freedom\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Chicago Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50613487403282,"sku":"9780226350721","price":44.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_df1b3c8d-95c5-4148-99e3-ead3a83507ad.jpg?v=1732403942","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-constitutional-bind-how-americans-came-to-idolize-a-document-that-fails-them-9780226350721","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}