How our economic rights are fundamental to the security and stability of our democracy. In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a State of the Union Address that should be counted as the greatest political speech of the twentieth century. In it, Roosevelt grappled with the definition of security in a democracy, concluding that "unless there is security here at home, there cannot be lasting peace in the world." To help ensure that security, he proposed a "Second Bill of Rights"--economic rights that he saw as necessary to political freedom, including a right to education, a right to adequate health care, a right to a home, and a right to protection against destitution. Many of the great legislative achievements of the past eighty years stem from Roosevelt's vision. In The Second Bill of Rights , Cass Sunstein uses this speech as a launching point to show how these rights are vital to the continuing security of our nation. This is an ambitious, sweeping book that argues for a new vision of FDR, of constitutional history, and of our current political scene that has never been more urgent or more relevant.
The Second Bill of Rights : FDR's Constitutional Vision and Why We Need It Today, with a New Preface by the Author