So we will be very grateful if you could silence your cell phone, and when we get to you and a please please please line up in our audience mike right there and ask your questions into the microphone. At the end of the night before you go by the crisis of the middleclass constitution, lean it against a bookshelf, we will be very grateful. The crisis of the middleclass constitution is the second book after the counterinsurgents constitution law in the age of small wars. This is a history of the idea of income any quality in constitutional republics, the first constitution doesnt assume the idea of class division, we need to adapt our constitution to work against the class any quality we see. We know how important this is, so important that senator Elizabeth Warren says every american needs to read this book. You guys are doing great. And associate professor of law at vanderbilt and center for american progress, during a Successful Senate campaign, within senior counsel of the United States senate. Is writing appears in the new york times, boston globe, politico, we are glad to have him at politics and prose. Please join me to welcome him. [applause] thank you. I would like to thank cspan for covering this event and thank you for coming today, we have some empty seats on this site and in the front, if you want to come on down there is lots of space, dont be shy. You are going to be shy. I suspect you are skeptical of coming to the stocks call the crisis of the middleclass constitution. After all what more could possibly be set about economic inequality and the crisis of the middleclass . Thin you get here and you see me and are wondering what could be said by someone who looks like he is 12 years old about the topic . I will try to take on this huge task, you might even call it a huge task and it is a hard task and the reason it is so hard is we know a lot about it. Everyone who lived through the election of 2016 and we know a lot of people were really upset in last year about economic inequality. Both Bernie Sanders and donald trump relied on economically populist rhetoric and got a lot of support for it. We have seen data on Rising Economic inequality over the last 30 years, we have seen data on shrinking middle class and insecurity of the middleclass in the last generation as well but i am not an economist. I want to ask a different question. Is economic inequality a constitutional problem . You might be skeptical of that suggestion too. The constitution doesnt say anything about the middleclass. It doesnt say anything about economic equality or any quality explicitly. If anything, the constitution seems it gets in the way of combating economic inequality, take the Citizens United decision which enables wealthy people in corporations to disproportionately influence public policy. I think the shrinking middle class and economic inequality are a constitutional problem. Let me explain why. For most of the history of western political and constitutional thought, the ancient greeks to the 18th century, constitutional theorists and statesmen were worried about the problems of any quality, economic inequality. They worried if a society was deeply divided into rich and for the rich would oppress the poor, the poor would try to confiscate the wealth of the rich and the results would be strife, violence and revolution. The founders knew the history, they were steeped in history and they were well aware that economic inequality is a serious source of instability, they knew that if the wealthy took power, it would slowly start to tilt the laws so outcomes would favor them. As john taylor said in 1814, when the rich under the poor it is slow and legal. The people, increasingly angry at Rising Economic and political inequality would respond but not through some sort of mass uprising. They would look for a leader to help them overthrow the oligarchy. Future broadway sensation alexander hamilton, you may have heard of him, he did not give up his shot. He said in the first of the federalist papers, of those men who overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people commencing demagogues and ending tyrants. Oligarchy, tierney. Citizens confront a dire fate. Statesmen and thinkers had two solutions to this problem. The first was to incorporate economic class into the structure of government. In ancient rome there was a patrician senate to the wealthy and tribune of the plebs for the poor. In england the house of lords for the wealthy, house of commons for the poor. I call these class warfare constitutions because they build class conflict into the structure of government. Each class have a share in governing and a check on the other. This creates stability. The second solution articulated by aristotle, the best government is a government in which the middleclass is bigger than the rich and the poor, in which there for the middleclass would govern. He called is a middle constitution. I call it a middleclass constitution, hence the title of the book. This is something of a cheat. The ideas that you dont have that many poor people are rich people, you have a huge middleclass, there isnt much economic inequality, they wont have conflicts between the rich and the poor. As a result you dont need a tribune of the plebs or patrician senate, you dont need this checking system that existed in the class warfare constitutions. The founding generation understood this history and believed america was unique in the history of the world because the distribution of wealth was relatively weak will equal. That seems crazy to us but put your back to put yourself in the 18th century. You have a sparsely populated country mostly along the eastern seaboard, but the center of the world was western europe to the people in the american colleagues colonies, london and paris. When the people looked across the ocean, the atlantic, they see big differences. No feudalism in america, no hereditary aristocracy unlike europe, even the richest people, the George Washingtons, many of you have been to mount vernon down the road, a beautiful home, but nothing compared to the palaces of the dukes and duchesses in england. Doesnt compare. America had another thing, vast lands to the west and that meant any white man and it was limited to white men at the time could become a Property Owner and have a measure of economic independence. Let me read you some brief accounts that indicate this. The first from noah webster who you have probably heard of, the creator of our dictionary, websters dictionary, he said and equality of property is the soul of the republic. This continues, the people will nab it inevitably possess power and freedom. When this is lost, power departs, liberty expires and a commonwealth will inevitably assume some other form. Second is charles pinckney, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. Here is what he said in the 1787. America was not only very different from the inhabitants of any state we are acquainted with in the modern world but also distinct from either the people of greece or rome or any state we are acquainted with among the ancients. Believed america is, quote, had a greater equality than to be found among people of any other country and that inequality would continue because, quote, the nation possessed immense tracts of uncultivated land which would ensure there would be few poor and few dependent. What you see here is a belief that the first, economic equality was necessary to have a republic and second, that american this were relatively economically equal so a republic would be possible. There is good reason to think they might have been right about this. It wasnt just a belief they had. Two economic historians, have done extensive work on economic inequality and what they found it in 1774, on the edge of the American Revolution the top 1 in america took home 8 of national income, not the same as it was in 1976. In comparison today the top 1 take home more than 20 of national income. A huge difference. Williamson and linda conclude in the late 18th Century America had the most a gala terry and distribution of wealth of any country it could calculate in the world. With relative equality as the backdrop, the founding generation adopted our constitution, they didnt make it a class warfare constitution. There is no tribune of the plebs in our system of government, no property requirements for becoming a senator. The framers knew how to write these provisions, they debated things like this in the Constitutional Convention and their state constitutions but they ultimately rejected them for a federal constitution and this is a radical change. This is what is deeply radical about our constitution. It is not a class warfare constitution. What we have is a middleclass constitution. A constitution based on the assumption that america had and would continue to have relative economic equality. In the course of the 19th century the economy fundamentally changed. Industrialization, urbanization, closing of the frontier, the shift from agriculture to wage work in factories, these developments pressure the economic foundation, during the gilded age, economic inequality was on the rise, economic power was increasing concentrated in a small number of robber barons and plutocrats and people were very worried this was a threat to the republican a threat to our constitutional system. Theodore roosevelt said there can be no real political democracy unless there is something approaching economic democracy. I will read a passage from the book to give you a feel for the concern of how the wealthy would corrupt the political system, turning the government away from the republic. This is from the 1880s and 1890s. Marcus daily is determined to stop William Anders clark. Clark like daily with an industrial magnet who owns copper mines, mills, smelters, lumber, banks, retail stores, newspapers and utilities but what he really wanted was to win elected office in montana. Partly he wanted status and power that came with public leadership, partly he wanted to support policies that would improve business holdings, when clark stood for congress, they pasted their handpicked candidates name under clarks leading to clarks loss in an instant of spectacular fraud. So began montanas or of the copper kinks. Over the next two decades cover magnet in montana would engage in some of the most blatant, surprising and shocking efforts of corruption to gain political power in american history. Daily canceled Business Contracts with those who did not support his political aims, started his own newspaper to compete with clarks, the two fought over whether the state capital would be located at a company town or helena which clark supported to block him and gave away cigars, broad rounds of drinks and handed out money in an effort to garner support for one city or the other. Clark decided in 1899 that it was his last best chance to get into the senate and he was willing to pay legislators whatever it costs. The opening bid for a bribe was 10,000 with may reportedly coming in at 20,001 river, 50,000 per vote. Clarks and remarked they would send the old man to the senate or the courthouse. For his part clark said he had never bought a man who wasnt for sale. By some estimates clark spent 431,000 to buy 47 votes in the state legislature and offered 200,000, commenting on the brazen corruption in the election mark twain said of clark he is said to have bought legislature the judges and other men by food, by this example he has so excused in swedens corruption that in montana it never has an offensive smell. Senator William Clark took office in washington to have investigations open immediately. After hearing testimony from state legislators and even Montana Supreme Court justices, clarks agents attempted to bribe the Senate Investigations committee declared clarks election void. In an amazing maneuver clark resigned and his allies in montana contrived to get the governor out of the state making the Lieutenant Governor the acting governor, at which point the Lieutenant Governor appointed clark to silva now what clark had been denied. This was the corruption going on in the gilded age. Buying politics, shaping political outcomes and the populist and progressives were worried this was going to ruin the constitutional system, the end of the republic. They came up with the most creative solutions. On the economic side the invented antitrust laws, consolidations of corporate power. A constitutional amendment to create an in and income tax in order to prevent economic power from influencing politics, campaignfinance reforms and passed the constitutional amendment from the direction of us senators. These battles continue through the progressive era and into the new deal. After world war 2 remake the idea that economic inequality is a threat to the republic largely disappeared from our national consciousness. I think this happened for three reasons. The first, the new deal largely won the battle over whether the federal government was constitutionally able fights over Economic Policy shifted from constitutional debate to being a debate about regulation. The second change was the cold war from founding through the 19th century and early 20thth century people who came to america, the founders and waves of immigrants afterwards left aristocracies and monarchies to come to a republic, they knew very well there was a difference between living in a republican living in an aristocracy. After world war ii the contrast shifts and the question is capitalism versus communism. In that contrast, this cut against discussions of equality in the american tradition. The third is we entered a period of prosperity that economists call the great depression, gdp was up, median incomes were up, americas middle class grew larger and larger. We undertook policies that helped make this happen, regulated finance, securities and exchange commission, glasssteagall, we imposed taxes at high rates in this period and invested in our own people to get into the middle class, said a generation to college through the g. I. Bill, encourage homeownership, invested in infrastructure like highways they created jobs and growth and put into place programs that would lift up the poor, medicare, medicaid. In this era economic inequality became less of an issue. I know some of you have been thinking from the very start you have been objecting but what about women, what about africanamericans, how many can possibly coexist with the reality of deep any quality between these groups and across these groups . In the book i just wish between two traditions, the first is the one i have been talking about so far, tradition of the middleclass constitution and the idea here is for there to be a republic you have to have relative economic inequality with the Political Community. This leaves open an important question. The Political Community, that is a question that has been fiercely contested including violently contested in our history. That over time we can also trace the tradition of inclusion which has expanded the Political Community to include women minorities. I think the key thing to think about is what happens when these traditions intersect. When you expand the Political Community it becomes necessary for all new members of the Political Community to be able to join the middleclass or else the republic cant succeed. Throughout our history statesmen understood this. After the civil war the reconstruction, not just treatment the patient and Political Rights but 40 acres and a mule, a measure of economic independence. I will read a brief bit from thaddeus stevens, a pennsylvania congressman, one of the leaders of the reconstruction, he proposed a bill confiscating the estates of the top 10 of rebel planters and redistributing that to the freed slaves of the south. Heres what he said. Without this, as it has never been a true republican heretofore it had more the features of aristocracy, the Southern States had been despotism, not government of the people, impossible than any practical equality of rights can exist, a few thousand men monopolize the property. The larger number of small proprietors the more safe and stable government. After his death, one of his colleagues said he knew a landed aristocracy and landless class are alike dangerous in a republican by a single act of justice could abolish both. The aim of the reconstructions, linking traditions together, inclusivity but also the middleclass, and economic equality. This is a key part of the civil rights movement, the march on washington, Martin Luther king gave his i have a dream speech, the march for jobs and freedom, economics and politics. What i is important about this today is we have to understand we expanded the Political Community, we have to make sure everyone has a chance to join the middleclass. This is a challenge because once again we are in an era of increasing economic inequality and that is why this is a constitutional problem. Constitution wasnt designed for any quality but a society of relative equality. Looking at the long history of republics i think we have a couple options for how to deal with this going forward. The first is we can try to realign this mismatch of economic equality in constitutional structure just by abandoning economic equality. We could say we want to be an Unequal Society and embrace the class warfare approach, give up on being a middleclass nation. What would that mean . We would have to change the constitutional structure at a root level. One house for the rich and one for the poor, we might have to resurrect the tribute of the pledge from rome. A professor at the university of chicago things we should do that. We need a tribune of the plebs. These are pretty outlandish ideas and unlikely to be implemented and probably undesirable. I dont think we want to be a country with fixed economic classes. The second option is we have to rebuild our middle class, reshape our e