2. Wealth, Commonwealth, and the Constitution of Opportunity

Abstract

New work in economics has shown how extreme inequality of wealth makes opportunities more unequal by hardening class lines, restricting access to networks, and giving elites both the means and the incentive to maintain and magnify their own advantages and keep others out. Moreover, we know more clearly than ever how economic and political inequality (and inequality of opportunity) are intertwined. But we have somehow lost the sense that these threats to our democracy of opportunity are threats, as well, to our constitutional order. We tell the story of the democracy of opportunity tradition, exploring how both its proponents and its opponents viewed these constitutional stakes at a series of critical moments of constitutional conflict. We begin our story at the beginning, and then recount how the democracy of opportunity tradition evolved as both our economic life and our constitutional order evolved. We then tell a story of how the democracy of opportunity tradition was forgotten, and how that forgetting colored the revival of the constitutional principle of inclusion in the Civil Rights Revolution. We end by addressing why the democracy of opportunity tradition matters today, and what might be at stake in recovering it.

Unbound: Releasing Inequality’s Grip on Our Economy

“…University of Texas at Austin law professors Joseph Fishkin and William Forbath argue that the United States has a long history of using government-and the US Constitution-to thwart concentrated economic power and oligarchy and we will need to revive this kind of thinking(Fishkin and Forbath 2015).6 There are a variety of alternative measures to GDP, which are briefly summarized byRampell (2008).…”