Patterns of Panic

Publication Title

Saint Louis University Law Journal

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

Disruptions in the constitutional order can agitate social anxiety, particularly when an out-group on the rise challenges an in-group's political dominance and position in a constitutional regime. This has been acutely true concerning civil rights expansion, where civil rights opponents have turned to libertarian theories of law when their cultural currency is on the ropes. This essay highlights some of the similarities between libertarian ideological impulses at critical junctures of American constitutional development during Reconstruction and in resistance to the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans in the twenty-first century. In these two crucial moments of constitutional development, a similar pattern of panic emerged whereby opponents to a more progressive constitutional order worked to steer civil rights jurisprudence toward a deregulatory, market-centered theory of rights, favoring live-and-let-live approaches to remedying social inequality over a state-backed right to dignity in the public square.

Recommended Citation

Anthony Michael Kreis, Patterns of Panic, 68 St. Louis U. L.J. 905 (2024).

Volume

68

First Page

905

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