With Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, progressives see a dystopian future: a judicial gavel pounding down for decades on voting rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights and more. But rather than despairing or scheming for 1930s-style court packing, what progressives need most is a constitutional vision of their own, a vivid picture of what judges should do with the power of the courts.
...The centerpiece should be a constitutionalism of strong democracy. Fighting against the vote-suppression efforts of a Republican Party that dominates national politics despite being in the minority in presidential and Senate votes, Democrats are recognizing the extent of disenfranchisement — of former felons, incarcerated people, Puerto Rican citizens and those whose jobs and family responsibilities keep them from the polls on any given Tuesday.
...Second, progressive candidates and activists are pressing for a new conception of economic citizenship: universal health and family leave, free higher education, access to union membership and other workplace protections against the power of owners and bosses. That would inform a constitutionalism of economic citizenship.
...Third is a constitutionalism of just criminal justice. Activists are raising a new generation of questions about policing and the prison system: who gets stopped, the system of money bail that keeps arrestees locked up simply because they cannot raise the cash to get out, the ways prosecutors’ offices set priorities, and the widespread and highly unequal incarceration that results.
...Fourth is a constitutionalism that respects the rights of noncitizens. Spurred by President Trump’s nativism, a new wave of mobilization and solidarity with migrants has highlighted the extreme legal, economic and sexual vulnerability of millions of undocumented residents and workers.
...Every political movement has its constitutional visions, from Great Society liberalism to Reaganite economic libertarianism and cultural conservatism. The work now is to define a jurisprudence of economic citizenship, strong democracy and inclusive justice that will help a resurgent left reclaim the Constitution.