Kenneth L. Karst – författare

Who are the real citizens of America? Which people truly qualify for equality under the law? Two hundred years ago, an honest answer to these questions would have excluded not only women, slaves, and Indians, but also Germans, Scotch-Irish, Catholics, and Jews. Yet the Declaration of Independence expresses a profound commitment to the ideal of equal citizenship. Throughout their history Americans have simultaneously believed in equality and accepted the subordination of groups of people—and both views have been reflected in American law. In this lively and original book, a leading constitutional law scholar shows how American law has both reflected and defined what it means to be an American, to "belong to America." Kenneth L. Karst shows that the ideal of equal citizenship has long been a vital part of the culture of American public life, and he tells a powerful story about how the idea of equality has developed in America, providing examples from throughout American history, from Dred Scott to Brown vs. Board of Education, from affirmative action to gender discrimination, and from the treatment of American Indians to the status of Christianity. Karst explores the psychological impact of discrimination on those who have been its victims—who, in one way or another, have been told by society that they do not belong. And he argues that the principle of equal citizenship can and should guide the nation's future just as it has shaped its past.

The conservative "social issues agenda" is targeted to voters who have felt left out, even threatened, by the successes of the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the gay rights movement. The agenda centers on the expressive capacities of law and promises a cultural counterrevolution. It evokes visions of an earlier social order in which most citizens who were black or female or gay stayed "in their place"—and the place was a subordinate one. In this lively and provocative book, a constitutional law scholar argues eloquently that most of the social issues agenda for law violates the constitutional principle of equal citizenship.Kenneth Karst, author of the prize-winning Belonging to America: Equal Citizenship and the Constitution, discusses a broad range of controversial issues, from street crime to pornography, from school prayers to sodomy, from abortion to welfare to the participation of women and gays in the armed forces. In most of these areas of law the social issues agenda sounds a persistent theme: an ideology of masculinity that treats power as its own justification and equates the proof of manhood with the expression of dominance. Translating this ideology into law raises grave constitutional questions. In the social-issues contexts of race, gender, sexuality, and religion, Karst argues, judicial review of governmental action should focus on concerns for the full inclusion of all Americans in the national community.