Recalibrating Reform
The Limits of Political Change

Stuart Chinn highlights this phenomenon, dubbed 'recalibration', as a regular companion to reform, and highlights the barriers to, and possibilities for, change in American politics.

Stuart Chinn (Author)

9781107667389, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 March 2017

355 pages, 28 b/w illus.
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

'Recalibrating Reform is an illuminating work on the role of the US Supreme Court in social change. Stuart Chinn examines the aftermath of reform in the areas of race and labor, arguing that when the court takes up the intersection between new norms and preexisting legal frameworks, it narrows reform to negotiate between prior laws and the new regime. The court's effort to manage legal tension, Chinn argues, limits the possibilities of reform through courts. An original and important contribution.' Mary L. Dudziak, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Emory University, Atlanta

Some of the most important eras of reform in US history reveal a troubling pattern: often reform is compromised after the initial legislative and judicial victories have been achieved. Thus Jim Crow racial exclusions followed Reconstruction; employer prerogatives resurged after the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935; and after the civil rights reforms of the mid-twentieth century, principles of color-blindness remain dominant in key areas of constitutional law that allow structural racial inequalities to remain hidden or unaddressed. When momentous reforms occur, certain institutions and legal rights will survive the disruption and remain intact, just in different forms. Thus governance in the post-reform period reflects a systematic recalibration or reshaping of the earlier reforms as a result of the continuing influence and power of such resilient institutions and rights. Recalibrating Reform examines this issue and demonstrates the pivotal role of the Supreme Court in post-reform recalibration.

Part I. Introduction: Introduction. Reconstructing governance
1. The theory and political processes of recalibration
2. The Supreme Court and transformative recalibration
Part II. Legal Reform and its Delimitation: 3. Emancipation, the reconstruction era, and delimitation
4. Labor rights, the new deal era, and delimitation
5. Constitutional equal protection, the civil rights era, and delimitation
6. Explaining judicial delimiting behavior
Part III. The Construction and Maintenance of Governance: 7. The entrenchment and maintenance of the Jim Crow order
8. The entrenchment and maintenance of industrial pluralism
9. The entrenchment and maintenance of the anti-classification order
10. Explaining order-affirming and tension-managing judicial behavior
11. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Politics & government [JP]