The Second Founding: Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Hobbesian Social Contract
My final draft for the research paper
Well, I finally finished it. Here’s the link.
After posting numerous sets of research and presentation notes, I finally completed my research paper exploring Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Hobbesian Social Contract. I hope you’ll give it a read. Here is the executive summary:
After the Civil War tore the nation apart, the country entered the period of Reconstruction, which saw the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, as well as various civil rights and enforcement acts. These amendments and bills came in response to the recalcitrance of the South against recognizing the rights of black Americans and the collapse of the rule of law throughout the region in the wake of the defeat of the Confederacy. The breakdown of social and legal order in the South after the Civil War can be understood as a dissolution of the social covenant between the people and the various states that led to an environment that approximated the state of nature in the Hobbesian sense. Additionally, the Reconstruction Amendments and the various bills they constitutionalized represent a new social covenant, or contract, between the citizens and the federal government, a dramatic shift in US constitutionalism to the point that they can best understood as a Second Founding. Furthermore, Hobbesian analysis will help uncover some of the logic behind the various policies, such as the amendments and bills, as well as the mistakes they sought to rectify. Finally, this paper will explore how the work of the Second Founding was undone, primarily by the Supreme Court, over the next few decades, which will also be analyzed through a Hobbesian lens.
Here’s the link to the paper again, it came out to around 40 pages. Please feel free to leave any criticisms or questions in the comments.