Episode 16: Jamal Greene
Jamal Greene, Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, joins us to discuss his new book, How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights is Tearing America Apart, in which he argues that we need a new approach to adjudicating rights claims. We discuss the flaws he sees in our current system—namely his assessment that courts either offer an absolute right or total deference to legislatures, depending on the right at issue. He also proposes an alternative approach where we can take everyone’s rights claims seriously.
Additional Reading:
Jamal Greene, Rights as Trumps?, 132 Harvard Law Review 28 (2018).
Samuel Moyn, Why Do Americans Have So Few Rights?, The New Republic (March 9, 2021).
Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (1978).
Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (1993).