Together, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights comprise the constitutional
foundation of the United States. These— the oldest governing documents still in use
in the world— urgently need an update, just as the constitutions of other countries
have been updated and revised. Human Rights Of, By, and For the People brings
together lawyers and sociologists to show how globalization and, climate change
offer an opportunity to revisit the founding documents. Each proposes specific
changes that would more closely align US law with international law. The
chapters also illustrate how constitutions are embedded in society and shaped by
culture. The constitution itself sets up contentious relationships among the three
branches of government and between the federal government and each state
government, while the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments begrudgingly
recognize the civil and political rights of citizens. These rights are described by
legal scholars as “negative rights,” specifically as freedoms from infringements
rather than as positive rights that affirm personhood and human dignity. The
contributors to this volume offer “positive rights” instead. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), written in the middle of the last
century, inspires these updates. Nearly every other constitution in the world has
adopted language from the UDHR. The contributors use intersectionality, critical
race theory, and contemporary critiques of runaway economic inequality to ground
their interventions in sociological argument.