The Second Bill Of Rights: FDR's UNfinished Revolution-- And Why We Need It More Than Ever - Hardcover

Sunstein, Cass R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465083323 ISBN 13: 9780465083329

Publisher: Basic Books, 2004

Synopsis

In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a State of the Union Address that was arguably the greatest political speech of the twentieth century. The speech began what Cass R. Sunstein calls the Second American Revolution by giving form and specificity, for the first time, to the concept of human economic rights. Many of the great legislative achievements of the past sixty years stem from Roosevelt's proposal for a Second Bill of Rights. Yet these rights have never been written into the Constitution, and they remain the subject of passionate debate. In recent years they have even lost ground.Using FDR's speech as a launching point, Sunstein examines the "legal realist" school of thought, which decisively refuted the idea of laissez-faire economics; describes how Roosevelt gradually developed the idea of a Second Bill of Rights; and asks why the Second Bill, which was almost enacted under the Warren Court, has never attained the constitutional status FDR sought for it. The reason, Sunstein maintains, is not anything unique to American culture or temperament but a particular historical accident: the election of Richard Nixon as President in 1968.This is an ambitious, sweeping book that argues for a new vision of FDR, of constitutional history, and of our current political scene. The Second Bill of Rights is an integral part of the American tradition and the starting point for contemporary political reform.

About this title

About the Author

Cass R. Sunstein is Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and a contributing editor at The New Republic and the American Prospect . He has testified before Congress on numerous occasions and has contributed as well to such publications as the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , and the Washington Post . His numerous books include Republic.com , Risk and Reason , Laws of Fear , and The Second Bill of Rights . He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Reviews

While it doesn't succeed in making Franklin Roosevelt into a constitutional innovator, this disheveled book does bring into focus FDR's forgotten effort to address domestic "security," as WWII neared its climax. Roosevelt's inaugural address of January 11, 1944, asked Congress to adopt a "second Bill of Rights": guarantees of work, adequate housing and income, medical care and education, among others—promises designed to extend the New Deal (and thwart the appeal of communism). The indefatigable Sunstein (Why Societies Need Dissent, etc.) sketches Roosevelt's domestic policies and the logistics of the inaugural address (included in full in an appendix), then debates the never-adopted bill's merits, historically as its ideas kicked around in the post WWII-era, and as it might be taken up today. He tends to be scanty on the bill's potential budgetary toll and on the responsibility for one's own welfare that FDR thought the bill's beneficiaries ought to bear. Sunstein roams widely over legal history and precedent, but is focused and clear in showing how FDR sowed the seeds of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (in whose 1948 drafting Eleanor Roosevelt played a crucial role) and energetic in discussing this proposal's further possible legacy.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465083323
• ISBN 13: 9780465083329
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304