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15 - Constitutional Aspirationalism Revisited

from Part III - American Constitutionalism and Constitutional Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2024

By
Justin Buckley Dyer
Edited by
Ran Hirschl  and
Yaniv Roznai
Ran Hirschl
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Yaniv Roznai
Affiliation:
Reichman University, Israel
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Summary

One of the core themes of Gary Jacobsohn’s work has been his observation that constitutional aspirations tend to develop within a disharmonic constitutional order. Jacobsohn draws our attention to Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass as models for thinking about the unfolding of U.S. constitutional aspirations within a larger framework of constitutional disharmony. This essay revisits Jacobsohn’s theory of constitutional aspiration, including its underlying philosophical premises, and concludes by putting it in dialogue with recent revisionist accounts of the U.S. constitutional order that downplay, deny, or mute the aspirations that Jacobsohn’s body of scholarship highlights and celebrates.

Keywords

Declaration of Independenceaspirationalismconstitutional disharmonyAbraham LincolnFrederick Douglass
Type
Chapter
Information
Deciphering the Genome of Constitutionalism
The Foundations and Future of Constitutional Identity
 , pp. 193 - 203
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

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