Dear RSF:

Please join us next Wednesday, May 1st, at 11 in the library and on Zoom for Visiting Scholar Julie Suk’s presentation, “Constitutional Cage: Amendment and the Quest for Inclusive Democracy.”  Although we have many exciting guest speakers lined up for the next few months, this will be our last presentation from the Visiting Class. The attached two chapters are provided as background reading.

Suk is a Professor of Law at Fordham University where she’s been appointed since 2021. Previous academic positions include appointments at the CUNY Graduate Center as Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Liberal Studies & Dean for Master’s Programs and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. Suk holds a JD from Yale Law School, a D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University (U.K.), and a BA in English and French Literature from Harvard University. At Yale she was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. Directly after graduation she clerked for Judge T. Harry Edwards at the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. She has published two books, After Misogyny: Law and Feminism in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2023) and We the Women: The Unstoppable Mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment (Skyhorse Publishing, 2020), as well as numerous articles in both the legal and popular press.

At the Foundation Suk is working on a new book which examines how the arduous process of amending the U.S. Constitution has shaped the prospects for equality and social inclusion as a matter of law and public policy. The project draws on the legislative and ratification histories of the Civil War amendments that sought the inclusion of African Americans, the progressive era amendments that sought greater distributive justice and the inclusion of women, and several failed amendments. It assesses the barriers imposed by the law of constitutional amendment to America’s path towards becoming a more inclusive and equitable democracy.