Which republican constitution?

• Author: Balkin, Jack M.
• Position: Book review

OUR REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION: SECURING THE LIBERTY AND SOVEREIGNTY OF WE THE PEOPLE. By Randy E. Barnett. (1) New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 2016. Pp. xiv + 283. $26.99 (cloth).

1. RANDY BARNETT, MEET INIGO MONTOYA

   Reading Randy Barnett's new book Our Republican Constitution, (3) one feels like Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride: "You keep using that word, 'republican.' I do not think it means what you think it means." Randy Barnett and I agree that we have a republican constitution. The problem is that we disagree about what that entails.

   Barnett's Republican Constitution has relatively little to do with the historical tradition of republicanism, a tradition that celebrates the common good; seeks to inculcate civic virtue; opposes aristocracy, oligarchy, and corruption; understands liberty not as mere negative freedom but as non-domination; connects civil rights to civic duties; and demands a government that derives its powers from and is ultimately responsive to the great body of the people.

   In fact, Barnett's "republicanism" is far closer to what most historians of the Founding era would regard as the opposite or complement of the republican tradition. This is the tradition of natural rights liberalism, which begins with John Locke and evolves into classical liberalism in the nineteenth century. This tradition celebrates individual autonomy, views the state as organized to protect the natural rights of individuals, fears the tyranny of majorities, and treats liberty as a negative freedom--a protected space in which individuals, free from state control, may accumulate property and pursue happiness (pp. 49-50).

   The classical liberal tradition is an important part of the American political tradition; but it is not the republican tradition. The American political tradition is a blend of liberal and republican ideals, which reappear in ever new guises as historical circumstances and political alliances change. Barnett has obscured the historical republican tradition by lifting the term and applying it to its opposite number. In fact, Barnett's vision of Our Republican Constitution is perhaps closest to an idealization of the classical liberal constitution of the late nineteenth century, which combined dual federalism with police powers jurisprudence. (4)

   This late nineteenth-century version of classical liberalism is the hero of Barnett's story. Every hero needs an adversary to compete with, and so Barnett constructs an opposite tradition, which he calls the Democratic Constitution; it seems to be an amalgam of Rousseau and early twentieth-century progressivism. Barnett pronounces our true Constitution to be the Republican (i.e., classical liberal) version. Barnett concedes that the Democratic Constitution is part of our history, but argues that it is not the best and truest version of our political selves. The Democratic Constitution (i.e., progressivism) is actually inconsistent with the basic premises of the American constitutional order. Indeed, as Barnett shows us--more in sorrow than in anger--following the perfection of the constitutional system in the nineteenth century, the Democratic Constitution has been ascendant. As a result, things have tended to fall apart, leading to the depredations of the New Deal, the Administrative State, and the Welfare State. To redeem Our Republican Constitution, we must remedy the fall that came in the early twentieth century. We must renounce progressivism and all its works.

   The disagreement between Barnett and me about the meaning of republicanism is not merely semantic. By taking the word "republican" and pasting it onto the classical liberal tradition, he has buried a truly important tradition in American constitutional thought--the actual historical republican tradition, which is not the same as Barnett's "Democratic Constitution." The historical republican tradition crosscuts Barnett's opposition between Republican and Democratic Constitutions, and includes features of both. More to the point, the historical republican tradition is especially relevant today, and it stands as a valuable critique of the limitations of late nineteenth-century classical liberalism.

   In saying this, however, I am not advocating that we simply ignore the lessons of Barnett's book and hew to the historical republican tradition. Like the classical liberal tradition, the historical republican tradition is flawed and compromised in its historical context. Only some parts of these two traditions are worth preserving and bringing forward into the present.

   Classical liberals have often been too complacent about threats to republics that stem from inequalities of wealth and coercive aspects of market economies. The historical tradition of republicanism, by contrast, insisted that economic self-sufficiency was central to participation in republican government. This demand, however, produced both conservative and egalitarian versions of republicanism.

   Conservative versions of republicanism sought to limit political freedoms to those (male) heads of households who were not dependent on others and therefore were free to pursue the public good. This excluded women, slaves, and persons who did not own much property. In fact, older and more conservative versions of republicanism, while opposing hierarchies or distinctions of rank among male heads of households, were either complacent about or actually defended hierarchies within households. (5) These versions of republicanism assumed that in order for men to be independent and self-governing, they had to be supported by women, slaves, and servants who were economically dependent on them. A similar argument justified property qualifications for the suffrage--if landless workers were dependent on their employers, they would simply vote their employers' interests and would fail to promote the public good. (6)

   The egalitarian version of republicanism, by contrast, has argued that government should work to dismantle hierarchies of domination and dependence. Government should create the conditions for a broad base of middle-class voters who are financially independent and therefore could rule themselves. These were the ambitions of the founders of the nineteenth-century Republican Party, who sought both to eliminate slavery and to secure the conditions of economic self-sufficiency for a broad base of the public. (7) The egalitarian strand of republicanism was influenced by liberalism, because liberalism has historically been willing to disrupt and transform existing social arrangements in order to realize the freedom and equality of individuals. (8) It is this egalitarian version of republicanism, together with the liberal tradition of respect for individual dignity and freedom, that we should carry forward with us into the present.

   My disagreement with Barnett is not a disagreement about the importance of natural law and liberalism to the American constitutional tradition. My point, rather, is that by emphasizing the classical liberal tradition to the exclusion of the historical republican tradition, he has given us an impoverished account of American constitutionalism. The American constitutional tradition, understood in its best sense, has always drawn on elements of both the republican and liberal traditions, and applied them to the problems and circumstances of the present. It has employed the best parts of each tradition to critique and transcend the blindnesses and limitations of the other. That is as true of the Founding period as it is of the present. No reconstruction of the American constitutional tradition can afford to discard one-half of this dialectic.

   Our Republican Constitution, however, is not written as--or intended to be--a historical tome. It is an argument about present-day constitutionalism directed to a popular audience. For that reason, it might make sense for Barnett to write this book in the way he has, labeling the classical liberal tradition he celebrates as "Republican." The reasons, however, have little to do with historical fidelity, and everything to do with how Barnett imagined we would structure debates about the direction of the Constitution and the country in the near future.

   When Barnett set down to write this book, fresh from his partial victory in the Health Care Case, (9) libertarians and constitutional conservatives might have hoped that the contemporary Republican Party might finally come to its senses. It might embrace Barnett's constitutional ideas about limited government in order to hold off the forces of progressive social democracy championed by the Democratic Party (p. 10). But, to everyone's amazement, the terms of political debate have shifted radically in the interim. In the world we now inhabit, the argument of Barnett's book risks being shoved rudely aside. The only political party that might embrace his ideas about the Constitution has descended into internal bickering and has been captured by a demagogue, the very sort of demagogue the Founders warned us about. Before the Republican Party can embrace Our Republican Constitution, it must first fight off the populist insurgency within its own ranks. The irony then, is that a book written to intervene in a contemporary debate about the Constitution may be most important for a political future whose contours are still uncertain.

2. BARNETT'S REPUBLICANISM

   What does Barnett mean by a republican constitution? First, Barnett's republicanism is the opposite of direct democracy and simple majority rule. It embraces an individual conception of popular sovereignty in which each and every one of us is a sovereign (p. 23). It opposes a collective conception of popular sovereignty, which, Barnett believes, leads to the view that the government should respect the will of the majority (pp. 97, 126). The problem with majority rule is that majorities always threaten to violate the rights of individuals or minority groups. When majorities do not respect...