“The Rise of the Constitution” with Professor Aziz Rana

Professor Aziz Rana is a Florence Rogatz Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. His research and teaching centers on American constitutional law and development, with a particular focus on how shifting notions of race, citizenship, and empire have shaped legal and political identity since the founding. Professor Rana’s forthcoming book, The Rise of the Constitution, explores how the Federal Constitution became a site of near unanimous public support in American life. He argues that the dominance and substantive meaning of constitutional veneration is actually a relatively recent development. The book raises a series of questions that have thus far been largely overlooked but that should be central to our conversations about the Constitution. How did our current consensus emerge? To what degree did such acceptance depend on the active suppression of alternatives? And what are the implications of this consensus and its history for contemporary political discourse and institutional possibilities? Join us for a conversation with Professor Rana on these topics and more.