Is Economic Justice Imperative to Democracy?
Like my father, I grew up economically advantaged. So it's taken me time and effort to understand the importance of the "Middle-Class Constitution"
Until 2018, I was never one to promote economic justice as an essential building block of democracy—and certainly not the tried-and-failed phantom of “economic equality.” What my father, who was a federal judge for four decades, reared his three children to defend, virtually to the death, is equality before the law, not economic equality.
At the dining room table over dinner, my brother, sister, and I would often hear dad quote the 14th amendment, adopted shortly after the Civil War to solidify the gains of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th amendment abolishing slavery.
He was a secular man who recited his scripture, the U.S. Constitution, with the passion of a preacher. Sometimes, as he quoted his bible, my father would pound the dinner room table with such force that I felt shaken and afraid.
I have bolded certain words below from the 14th amendment to show where his voice rose and his fist came down:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Dad was passionate about the Constitution. He believed righteously that the rule of law—based on the principle of human equality, regardless of race, sex, religion, or any other circumstance or condition of life—was the everlasting salvation of democracy.
I think he was right about this, but, then again, he spent his most of his life financially comfortable. From birth, he enjoyed an excellent education and an upper middle class lifestyle and, later, a secure, well-respected job and a modest inheritance based upon well-timed land purchases by his forbears.
I followed in his footsteps in all regards, so it’s taken me some time and effort to understand that economic justice, like political equality, is an essential component of constitutional democracy.
One inspiration in this awakening was my reading of an excellent book by Vanderbilt law professor Ganesh Sitaraman entitled The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution: Why Economic Inequality Threatens Our Republic.
I read Sitaraman’s book in 2018 and have been persuaded ever since.
More recently, yesterday, I re-read the chapter “Economic Justice” in my own book of daily democracy meditations (released March 14) and recognized anew the potency of Sitaraman’s arguments in “The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution.”
At the first Summit for Democracy, the same arguments were made time-and-again by so many world leaders of democracies far less affluent than the United States.
One of the things I most love about these Biden-Harris Summits for Democracy (the next one starts on March 29) is how much Americans, myself foremost among them, have to learn from the many small non-American, non-European democracies of the world. Here’s a sampling of the quotations from that chapter:
ECONOMIC JUSTICE
Hunger and want know not democracy.
JOHN BRICEÑO—Prime Minister of Belize
We have to move from an electoral democracy to an effective democracy that guarantees the rights to health, education, drinking water, equal opportunity, housing, employment, and dignified treatment.
PEDRO CASTILLO—President of Peru
Only by creating a more just and equitable society will we really ensure that our democracy delivers for the needs of our people.
HAGE G. GEINGOB—President of Namibia
At the end of the day, democracy must bring prosperity and welfare to the people.
JOKO WIDODO—President of Indonesia
Global inequity and practices which perpetuate poverty, unemployment, and crime have contributed to weaken democracies and to collapse of many of them.
GASTON BROWNE—Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda
Widening disparities and worsening inequalities, caused by free competition, is hampering social unity and endangering democracy. As we face serious challenges—infectious diseases, the climate crisis, globalization and social polarization—it is time for us to mull over how to defend and advance democracy and find solutions.
MOON JAE-IN—President of the Republic of Korea
The threats to democracy have many guises, from drowning out the voice of the people, to the denial of opportunity, to the erection of barriers of social and economic inequity.
ROOSEVELT SKERRIT—Prime Minister of Dominica
Democracy, my friends, must be rooted in the elimination of poverty and the assurance of freedoms. And, fundamentally, freedom is about one’s right to choose, and hence it is inextricably linked to the elimination of poverty.
MIA AMOR MOTTLEY—Prime Minister of Barbados
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