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Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places: Why State Constitutions Contain America's Positive Rights

Online ISBN:
9781400846276
Print ISBN:
9780691155777
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Book

Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places: Why State Constitutions Contain America's Positive Rights

Emily Zackin
Emily Zackin
Hunter College, The City College of New York
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Published online:
19 October 2017
Published in print:
21 April 2013
Online ISBN:
9781400846276
Print ISBN:
9780691155777
Publisher:
Princeton University Press

Abstract

Unlike many national constitutions, which contain explicit positive rights to such things as education, a living wage, and a healthful environment, the U.S. Bill of Rights appears to contain only a long list of prohibitions on government. American constitutional rights, we are often told, protect people only from an overbearing government, but give no explicit guarantees of governmental help. This book argues that we have fundamentally misunderstood the American rights tradition. The United States actually has a long history of enshrining positive rights in its constitutional law, but these rights have been overlooked simply because they are not in the U.S. Constitution. The book shows how they instead have been included in America's state constitutions, in large part because state governments, not the federal government, have long been primarily responsible for crafting American social policy. Although state constitutions, seemingly mired in trivial detail, can look like pale imitations of their federal counterpart, they have been sites of serious debate, reflect national concerns, and enshrine choices about fundamental values. This book looks in depth at the history of education, labor, and environmental reform, explaining why America's activists targeted state constitutions in their struggles for government protection from the hazards of life under capitalism. Shedding light on the variety of reasons that activists pursued the creation of new state-level rights, the book challenges us to rethink our most basic assumptions about the American constitutional tradition.

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