Hugo L. Black Lecture on Freedom of Expression

The Constitution, Democracy and Economic Inequality:
Why has democracy failed to check economic inequality in the United States? 

Professor Bertrall Ross, U.C. Berkeley Law

Wednesday, March 31, 2021. 

This annual lecture is designed to bring to the Wesleyan Campus, public figures and scholars with experience and expertise in matters related to the First Amendment and freedom of expression. This lecture is endowed by Leonard S. Halpert ’44 (1922–2017), who believed that the First Amendment to the US Constitution is the basis upon which we enjoy all other Civil Rights. This lecture is named in honor of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black. 

About the Lecture

Prior to the pandemic, the United States had reached a point of economic inequality that had not been seen since the 1920s.  Those levels of inequality are likely to worsen as the American economy recovers, with broader consequences for political stability and economic growth.  According to a leading social science theorem, democracy is supposed to act as a check on growing economic inequality.  The intuition behind this theorem is simple: If a majority of the population sees their incomes stagnate while the wealthy minority gets richer, the majority will demand redistributive policies, and representatives will respond by addressing inequality.  However, very little redistribution has accompanied rising economic inequality in the United States. 

In this talk, Professor Ross addresses the question: Why has democracy failed to mitigate economic inequality in the United States?  His lecture begins by identifying the decision of the framers of the U.S. Constitution intentionally to politically disempower the Poor. He then addresses the constitutional limits that the Supreme Court has placed on redressing economic inequality in its Equal Protection and First Amendment jurisprudence. In light of this legal background, he argues that reducing the income class imbalance of the electorate – i.e. the tendency of wealthier voters to vote at higher rates than less affluent ones – is one of the last constitutionally viable and effective means of ameliorating political inequality.  He will show how political campaigns and changes to their mobilization strategies will be key to inducing greater participation among the poor.  The lecture concludes by proposing three legal strategies aimed at incentivizing such campaigns to mobilize the Poor.

Bertrall Ross Bio

Bertrall Ross is the Chancellor’s Professor of Law at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. His research is driven by a concern about democratic responsiveness and accountability, as well as the inclusion of marginalized communities in the political process. Ross’s past scholarship in the areas of election law, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation has been published in the Columbia Law Review, NYU Law Review, and the University of Chicago Law Review, among others. He is currently working on articles related to separation of powers, partisan gerrymandering, and voter data and inequality and book projects on political inequality and the meaning of the Fifteenth Amendment’s prohibition on discriminatory vote denial. Ross earned his J.D. from Yale Law School and Masters degrees from the London School of Economics and Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Prior to joining Berkeley Law, he was a Kellis Parker Academic Fellow at Columbia Law School.  

 

Hugo L. Black Lecturers 1991 - 2021

Bertrall Ross Chancellor's Professor of Law U.C. Berkeley Law	Jelani Cobb IRA A. Lipman Professor of Journalism Columbia University
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals  for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia	Rodney Smolla Dean University of Richmond Law School
Harry A. Blackmun Justice Supreme Court of the United States	Margaret Marshall Chief Justice Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
Anthony Lewis Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, The New York Times	Cass Sunstein School of Law University of Chicago
Nadine Strossen President American Civil Liberties Union	Patricia Williams Professor of Law Columbia University
Abner Mikva Former Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia	Laurence H. Tribe Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard University
Norman Dorsen Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law	Lawrence Lessig Director, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethic Professor, Harvard Law School
Patricia Wald Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia	Jack M. Balkin Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment Yale Law School
Floyd Abrahms William J. Brennan Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law, Columbia University	Antonin Scalia Associate Justice Supreme Court of the United States
Kathleen Sullivan Dean Stanford Law School	Geoffrey R. Stone Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor University of Chicago Law School
Nat Hentoff Award-winning author and journalist	Aharon Barak President of the Israeli Supreme Court (Ret.), IDC Herzliya
Lee C. Bollinger President Columbia University	Robert Post Sol and Lillian Goldman Professor of Law Dean, Yale Law School
Anthony D. Romero Executive Director American Civil Liberties Union	Stanley Fish The Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law Florida International University
Linda Greenhouse Knight Distinguished Journalist in Residence Joseph M. Goldstein Lecturer in Law Yale Law School	John Finn Professor Emeritus Wesleyan University