Rappaport on The American Creed and the Constitutional Order @uclaw_sf

Aaron J. Rappaport, UC Law, San Francisco, has published The American Creed and the Constitutional Order. Here is the abstract.

Liberal democracy faces an existential threat in the United State today. Political polarization and the rise of far-right extremism both raise questions about the institutional structure’s continuing viability. For the first time in recent memory, Americans are questioning whether the nation might ultimately become undemocratic, illiberal, or both. This essay explores a neglected cause of this political crisis and, more importantly, offers a possible long-term path forward. The underlying roots of the nation’s political crisis lie in the institutional structure of liberal democracy itself. That core structure inevitably generates deep anxieties and grievances, concerns that are intensified by two additional factors –the promulgation of illiberal ideologies, which validate the sense of grievance, and the use of modern propaganda techniques, which spread ideologically-infused messages widely and effectively. Grievances, ideologies and propaganda combine to generate a cycle of radicalization that drives citizens towards extremism. The only real solution to this problem is, perhaps counterintuitively, an ideological one. Only a compelling ideology of liberal democracy can ameliorate the sense of grievance, counter the illiberal ideologies, and inoculate the public against propaganda. The endeavor to identify such an ideology inevitably leads to the American Creed, the core ideals that were thought to underlie the American experiment. But as this essay argues, the American Creed as conventionally understood is too vague and conflicted to offer a solid foundation upon which to build America’s complex institutional structure. This paper concludes by articulating a set of requirements that a compelling ideology must possess. The effort serves as a preliminary step towards the articulation of a new and more compelling American Creed.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Forthcoming From Routledge Books: Culture, Secularization, and Democracy (Sophie van Bijsterveld and Hans-Martien ten Napel, eds., 2025)

 Forthcoming from Routledge Books:

Culture, Secularization, and Democracy: Lessons from Alexis de Tocqueville (Sophie van Bijsterveld and Hans-Martien ten Napel, eds., 2025). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

Following the approach developed by Alexis de Tocqueville, this volume views democracy as a cultural phenomenon. It starts from the assumption that if we are to adequately address concerns about the current state and future of modern Western democracies, we need first to tackle the cultural preconditions necessary for the functioning of a democracy. Since Tocqueville’s time, the book takes the most crucial change in the West to be ‘double secularisation’. Here, this concerns, first, the diminished influence of organised Christianity. Even though secularity was partly a product of Christianity, secularisation is highly significant in terms of the cultural underpinnings of Western democracy. Second, it involves a decreased interest in and knowledge of classical philosophy. Chapters on secularity, family life, civic life, and public spirit focus on central elements of the changed cultural foundation of democracy, exploring issues such as identity politics, the public space, and the role of human rights and natural law in a pluralistic and resilient democracy. The volume concludes with a closer look at the implications of current presentism, that is, the view that only the present counts for the legitimacy and effectiveness of democratic systems. Finally, it asks if double secularisation can also offer fresh opportunities for promoting the conditions of a viable democracy. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of law and religion, constitutional law, political science, history, and philosophy.