The Constitution 'serves white supremacy,' pro-reparations law professor argues

In the Boston University Law Review article “The Antiracist Constitution,” Brandon Hasbrouck argues that the Constitution, “as it has been interpreted by ou courts, serves white supremacy.” 

Hasbrouck, who is an assistant professor of law at Washington and Lee University, uses Thomas Jefferson’s slaves, the Fugitive Slave Act, and George Floyd’s murder as evidence for his argument. 

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”[I]n recent years, some of the most egregiously racist cases have involved the Court resting on constitutional colorblindness to establish why it will not attempt to deal in reasoning or remedies focused on race,” the law professor writes.

Campus Reform spoke with American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Jay Cost about the ideological framework informing this line of critique against the Constitution. 

“I think there is a sense of motivated reasoning at play,” Cost told Campus Reform. 

”The Constitution is a political problem for the left,” Cost explained, because it “limit[s] the scope of government” in a way that is not necessarily conducive for progressive politics. 

”So it is a subject of attack,” he concluded. 

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Hasbrouck further argues that the Constitution’s Reconstruction Amendments should be read according to their original meaning, which he relates to the historical “Black vision of Reconstruction.”

”Reconstruction Amendments” refer to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. 

According to Hasbrouck, such reforms would include police abolition, carceral abolition (prison abolition), and property reparations.

Campus Reform contacted Brandon Hasbrouck, Boston University, and Washington and Lee University for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.