Paul Gowder on Constitutional Theory and African-American Political Thought

In this episode, Paul Gowder, Professor of Law at the University of Iowa College of Law, discusses his article "Reconstituting We the People: Frederick Douglass and Jurgen Habermas in Conversation," which will be published in the Northwestern University Law Review. Gowder begins by describing conventional constitutional theory and explaining why internal contradictions make its theory of legitimacy unworkable. Then he describes an assortment of constitutional theories he characterizes as "constitutional conception," explaining how they solve the problems with the conventional theory, but are themselves vulnerable to other objections. Specifically, a constitution is illegitimate when it excludes people from participating in its development. Gowder observes that African-Americans have historically been excluded from constitutional development in the United States, and observes how African-American political thinkers, including Frederick Douglass have conceptualized and utilized that exclusion, in a theoretical move he calls, "cynical faith." Gowder is on Twitter at @PaulGowder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.