Constitutional Democracy

Think of the world you will be living in the rest of your life. Actually, you are already living in it. Groups making demands, sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently but almost always disturbingly. Politicians making promises of a brave new world, or at least one from which the troubles of the day are banished. Mass murders in Africa and the Middle East. The clash of religions. Debates over climate change and threats to the environment, balanced against economic growth. What are you to make of this from the perspective of your major and your profession, which, almost inevitably, have to sacrifice breadth for depth? Take legal and social equality, a central issue of this course. That would seem to have been settled by the Declaration of 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”