Workers and their organizations are facing enormous obstacles today. Corporations wield immense power, not only in the marketplace but also in politics, which has, for many years, effectively blocked the updating of antiquated laws governing labor relations. Instead, unions have been subjected to a steady onslaught of attacks at the state level and growing hostility from the US Supreme Court. They have all but lost basic protections that the legal system once provided-making organizing, bargaining, and striking increasingly difficult. Black workers continue to face a decades-long job crisis characterized by disproportionate unemployment (compared with White workers) and poor job quality. Immigrant workers of all statuses feel the threat of exclusionary immigration policies and heightened xenophobic rhetoric coming from the top echelons of the US government. Similar to worker organizing in the United States before the New Deal contract, organizations in the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been scrambling to find leverage within an increasingly hostile economic, political, and legal environment. Despite formidable obstacles, this volume shows that vibrant, creative experimentation has never ceased. In lieu of new federal regulation, public and private sector national unions and local affiliates have been actively trying out new approaches that pair organizing with mechanisms that support bargaining. They have doubled down on electoral politics and creative policy fights to raise standards and facilitate organizing, with an unprecedented focus on low-wage workers. They have forged closer, more equal partnerships with community organizations than ever before. Still much more work needs to be done. New organizational models are also emergent. These experiments, which include worker centers and what some refer to as "alt labor" groups, diverge from traditional labor unions in a number of ways. They aim to represent workers and their workplace interests but do not typically work within the New Deal collective bargaining construct regulated by the government.

Questions at the very heart of the American experiment-about what the nation is and who its people are-have lately assumed a new, even violent urgency. As the most fundamental aspects of American citizenship and constitutionalism come under ever more powerful pressure, and as the nation's politics increasingly give way to divisive, partisan extremes, this book responds to the critical political challenge of our time: the need to return to some conception of shared principles as a basis for citizenship and a foundation for orderly governance. In various ways and from various perspectives, this volume's authors locate these principles in the American practice of citizenship and constitutionalism. Chapters in the book's first part address critical questions about the nature of U.S. citizenship; subsequent essays propose a rethinking of traditional notions of citizenship in light of the new challenges facing the country. With historical and theoretical insights drawn from a variety of sources-ranging from Montesquieu, John Adams, and Henry Clay to the transcendentalists, Cherokee freedmen, and modern identitarians-American Citizenship and Constitutionalism in Principle and Practice makes the case that American constitutionalism, as shaped by several centuries of experience, can ground a shared notion of American citizenship. To achieve widespread agreement in our fractured polity, this notion may have to be based on "thin" political principles, the authors concede; yet this does not rule out the possibility of political community. By articulating notions of citizenship and constitutionalism that are both achievable and capable of fostering solidarity and a common sense of purpose, this timely volume drafts a blueprint for the building of a genuinely shared political future.

Questions at the very heart of the American experiment-about what the nation is and who its people are-have lately assumed a new, even violent urgency. As the most fundamental aspects of American citizenship and constitutionalism come under ever more powerful pressure, and as the nation's politics increasingly give way to divisive, partisan extremes, this book responds to the critical political challenge of our time: the need to return to some conception of shared principles as a basis for citizenship and a foundation for orderly governance. In various ways and from various perspectives, this volume's authors locate these principles in the American practice of citizenship and constitutionalism. Chapters in the book's first part address critical questions about the nature of U.S. citizenship; subsequent essays propose a rethinking of traditional notions of citizenship in light of the new challenges facing the country. With historical and theoretical insights drawn from a variety of sources-ranging from Montesquieu, John Adams, and Henry Clay to the transcendentalists, Cherokee freedmen, and modern identitarians-American Citizenship and Constitutionalism in Principle and Practice makes the case that American constitutionalism, as shaped by several centuries of experience, can ground a shared notion of American citizenship. To achieve widespread agreement in our fractured polity, this notion may have to be based on "thin" political principles, the authors concede; yet this does not rule out the possibility of political community. By articulating notions of citizenship and constitutionalism that are both achievable and capable of fostering solidarity and a common sense of purpose, this timely volume drafts a blueprint for the building of a genuinely shared political future.