America Without Law

On this episode of The Open Mind, we're delighted to welcome Whitman College political scientist, Jack Jackson, to discuss his book “Law Without Future: Anti-Constitutional Politics and the American Right.”
Excerpt:
HEFFNER: Jack, the title of your book immediately got my attention. And of course there are ample examples that you point to in the body of violating constitutional norms that have been ones we as a nation have adhered to, but 2020 does seem like a test as to whether or not we will have a future with law. And so I wonder now that this has been published and you had been on the road up until COVID talking about this book, what do you say about a future without law? Without the constitution being respected?
JACKSON: I want to pause a little bit on that because part of what I'm trying to do in the book is to pull apart a commitment to constitutional democracy and a commitment to our current constitution. So I have some hesitation about embracing the constitution or thinking the U.S. Constitution is a safe harbor for what we'll just broadly call political freedom and justice in the present. But looking at 2020 on the one hand I'm not surprised too much by what's been going on. You know, many people think that what we're witnessing is somehow Trump specific in 2020, or it's the current attorney general. And part of what I try to show in the book is that this has actually been a long ongoing process on the political right of a certain kind of deterioration of constitutional practice or a deterioration of a commitment to constitutional norms. You know, when I look at 2020 right now, I must confess, I feel more hopeful than I have in some time. Let me just give you an example and the reason why I feel hopeful right now. With the ongoing uprising of Black Lives Matter against police brutality and the prison industrial complex, I've had two sort of maybe say three responses. One is the sort of authoritarian unleashing of violence, which I think you see in the nation's capital with the president. There's a second response and this one troubles me actually as much. And you see this with Mayor Keisha Bottoms in Atlanta, who's now being touted as a possible vice presidential candidate for Joe Biden. She came out, I think this was the second day of the protest and she told the protesters to go home. She said, go home and go vote, as a response to this. A third response has been the protesters, booing her, telling her to go home. You see something similar happening in Minneapolis, where there's a sort of refusal to simply go home and go vote and play by established rules. And I think there's something hopeful about that, hopeful about the future of both constitutionalism and some of our most important, constitutional values that is, I think the people in the streets right now our best bet for realizing doctrines or promises of say equal protection under law. So my argument I'm sorry, Alexander.