Constitutional Crisis,Constitutional Nostalgia

Abstract

This essay argues that the unfolding constitutional crisis in the United States is best understood as being marked by both constitutional disintegration and constitutional counter-revolution. In response, many liberals have cultivated a nostalgia for a pre-crisis constitutional consensus. However, looking at the political reaction to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, we can see that nostalgia is itself a condition of the crisis as it forecloses the formulation of a constitutional politics that can adequately address the political situation. Turning to feminist legal theory archives, the essay concludes by offering a non-nostalgic vision to counter the authoritarianism and neofascism that animate the crisis.