R M Smith
Biographic Data
| ID | 25010 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R M Smith |
| GIVEN NAMES | R M |
| FAMILY NAME | Smith |
| SIGNATURE | SMITH R M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6983-9232 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 111 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 981 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 111 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1862 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Can (and Should) This Marriage Be Saved? Emancipatory and Colonialist Aspirations in American Constitutionalism
Aziz Rana has written a second major analysis of the American legal and political system, building on but going beyond his earlier work, The Two Faces of American Freedom. In The Constitutional Bind, Rana shows persuasively how, when, and why Americans came to treat deeply flawed features of the 1787 Constitution as sacrosanct. But while his works provide invaluable critical insights, Rana unduly minimizes the roles of the Declaration of Independ…
Donald J. Trump, the Supreme Court, and American Constitutionalism
The articles in this volume, written by leading law professors, political scientists, and journalists, center on the impact of President Donald Trump on the U.S. Supreme Court and the impact of the court on the second Trump administration and on all Americans. President Trump has already appointed a third of the current court and may appoint more than half. Considering that the second Trump administration has sought to “flood the zone” with execu…
Is Chief Justice John Roberts an Institutionalist? A Historical Institutionalist Analysis
Chief Justice John Roberts is often called an "institutionalist," indicating that he places the good of the Supreme Court as a governing institution over his own political preferences. This description is true only to a limited extent. The historical institutionalist analysis presented here shows that Roberts's priority is to advance his version of the modern conservative legal movement's vision of the Constitution, and that he protects the judic…
When the People Rule: Popular Sovereignty in Theory and Practice
In recent decades, popular sovereignty has come under increasing pressure. The rise of populism, often illiberal or authoritarian, has undermined minority rights, individual autonomy, and rule of law. The expansion of international institutions and greater reliance on market and non-governmental organizations have gradually insulated large areas of policymaking from public control. In turn, these developments cast doubt on the viability and desir…
America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair
Religious Liberty and the American Founding and American Constitutionalism in the Twenty-First Century
Ask a Political Scientist Symposium on the Contributions of Danielle Allen: Introduction
The Risks and Benefits of National Stories
Authoritarian nationalism is on the rise in many countries around the world, threatening liberal democracies. Many on the left rightly fear that any and all celebrations of national identities risk heightening these dangers. It is questionable, however, whether illiberal nationalism can be defeated politically without some reliance on progressive stories of national identity that advance themes of equality, freedom, and inclusion in ways that res…
Who Is Intolerant? The Clash Between LGBTQ+ Rights and Religious Free Exercise
Few denials of tolerance are more severe than rejection of the moral worth of another’s way of life. In the U.S. today, many traditional religious believers, especially fundamentalist Christians, and many LGBQT+ persons see each other’s ways of life as deeply evil in important respects. These gulfs probably cannot be bridged; but public policies can and should seek to accommodate all claims of conscience as far as this can be done without denying…
Legal Civic Orders and Equitable Lived Citizenships
Most modern Western political theories embrace equal citizenship as a normative ideal. Many scholars, however, focus on "legal citizenship" and conceive of equal citizenship as uniformity of legal rights and duties. Others focus on experiences of "lived citizenship" and conceive of equal citizenship as achieving sufficient economic, political, and social standing for persons to be seen as civic equals. Using the United States as its example, this…
Racial Reparations against White Protectionism: America's New Racial Politics
After more than half a century in which American racial politics has been structured primarily as a clash between two rival “racial orders” or “policy alliances,” the longstanding coalitions are transforming into ones centered on significantly new themes. The racially conservative “color-blind” policy alliance is, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, becoming an alliance promising “white protectionism.” The “race-conscious” policy alli…
Response to Gabriel L. Negretto’s Review of Modern Constitutions
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White Protectionism in America
Critics charge President Donald Trump with racism, but he insists he opposes bigotry and is an American nationalist, not a white nationalist. We use analysis of Trump’s campaign rhetoric, his administration’s policies, and their reception to assess these rival claims. In his campaign, Trump narrated American identity as a tale of lost greatness in which a once-unblemished America gave way to globalist elites who have victimized many Americans, pa…
Islands in the Churning Stream: Analyzing Xenophobia and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century
Erica Lee’s America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States provides a valuable overview of opposition to immigration from the nation’s colonial era to the present. James Lindley Wilson’s Democratic Equality articulates a fresh conceptual basis for equal citizenship and develops its implications for American democratic institutions. Both make enduring contributions. Both share the limitation of not addressing whether to sustai…
Apsa Presidential Task Force Report on New Partnerships
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Conclusion
Previous articleNext article FreeSymposium on the Challenges Facing DemocratsConclusionNicole Mellow and Rogers M. SmithNicole MellowWilliams College Search for more articles by this author and Rogers M. SmithUniversity of Pennsylvania Search for more articles by this author Williams CollegeUniversity of PennsylvaniaPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail…
Toward Progressive Narratives of American Identity
Donald Trump is one of many leaders who have come to power in recent years championing right-wing nationalisms often called populist. He has done so by advancing an "America First" vision of U.S. history, identity, and purpose that many find compelling. Liberals and progressives in America and elsewhere have failed to counter with politically resonant narratives of national identity that champion greater and more egalitarian inclusiveness. This a…
Left Turn on a Red Light? Challenges and Decisions Facing Liberals and Progressives After 2016
The Democratic Party in the United States, like other left-leaning parties around the world, is struggling to counter the rise of right-wing populism. The premise of this symposium is that the party’s challenges have deep historical roots and are problems of modern liberal governance more generally. Despite their different perspectives on the sources of, and their different solutions for, the Democratic Party’s difficulties, the essays are united…
What Good Can Political Science Do? From Pluralism to Partnerships
At a time when authoritarian regimes are on the rise around the world, higher education in general and political science in particular are facing declining support and sharper political pressures in many places. Political scientists have long promised that their discipline can add to knowledge about politics and educate citizens. However, doubts have grown about whether our increasingly pluralistic discipline collectively generates useful knowled…
Lockean Liberalism and American Constitutionalism in the Twenty-First Century: The Declaration of Independence or “America First”
A Discussion of Jessica Blatt's Race and the Making of American Political Science
In Race and the Making of American Political Science , Jessica Blatt argues that the professionalization of the discipline was deeply entwined with ideas about racial difference, and the concomitant attempt by leading scholars to define and defend a system of racial hierarchy in the United States and beyond. Although it focuses on the period from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s, the book also raises fundamental questions about the h…
Pursuing Shared Civic Purposes amidst Division and Diversity in Modern America
The severe political polarization that besets contemporary America cannot be successfully diminished unless Americans advance narratives of common identity, stories of peoplehood, in which most can see their aspirations and values expressed. America as an ongoing democratic project is one such narrative. Still better is the story told by the antislavery constitutionalists, including Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, who saw America as dedic…
Meet the Apsa Officers and Council
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Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History
Is civic identity in the United States really defined by liberal, democratic political principles? Or is U.S. citizenship the product of multiple traditions not only liberalism and republicanism but also white supremacy, Anglo-Saxon supremacy, Protestant supremacy, and male supremacy? In this powerful and disturbing book, Rogers Smith traces political struggles over U.S. citizenship laws from the colonial period through the Progressive era and sh…
Response to Rogers Brubaker's review of Political Peoplehood: The Roles of Values, Interests, and Identities
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Racial Orders in American Political Development
American political science has long struggled to deal adequately with issues of race. Many studies inaccurately treat their topics as unrelated to race. Many studies of racial issues lack clear theoretical accounts of the relationships of race and politics. Drawing on arguments in the American political development literature, this essay argues for analyzing race, and American politics more broadly, in terms of two evolving, competing "racial ins…
Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America
Analysts of American politics since Tocqueville have seen the nation as a paradigmatic "liberal democratic" society, shaped most by the comparatively free and equal conditions and the Enlightenment ideals said to have prevailed at its founding. These accounts must be severely revised to recognize the inegalitarian ideologies and institutions of ascriptive hierarchy that defined the political status of racial and ethnic minorities and women throug…
Political Jurisprudence, the "New Institutionalism," and the Future of Public Law
For the last quarter century public-law studies have been dominated by "political jurisprudence," which tries to understand law as a product of political forces. Critics claim this outlook, as now articulated, has generated fragmented empirical work disconnected from larger normative issues. This essay uses recent "institutionalist" or "structuralist" perspectives, based on critiques of pluralist political science and both Marxist and functionali…
Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership
How can we build thriving political communities? In this provocative account of how societies are bound together, Rogers Smith examines the importance of 'stories of peoplehood', narratives that promise economic or political power and define political allegiances in religious, cultural, racial, ethnic and related terms. Smith argues that no nations are purely civic: all are bound in part by stories that seek to define elements intrinsic to their …
The "American Creed" and American Identity: The Limits of Liberal Citizenship in the United States
IN 1915, President Woodrow Wilson told group of newly naturalized citizens that they had just sworn allegiance no one, only to a great ideal, to great body of principles, to great hope of the human race (Harrington 1980: 678). The view of citizenship Wilson thus expressed has distinguished historic lineage, recently reaffirmed by Samuel P. Huntington. In Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, he maintains that for most nations, identity is the prod…
White Protectionism in America
Critics charge President Donald Trump with racism, but he insists he opposes bigotry and is an American nationalist, not a white nationalist. We use analysis of Trump’s campaign rhetoric, his administration’s policies, and their reception to assess these rival claims. In his campaign, Trump narrated American identity as a tale of lost greatness in which a once-unblemished America gave way to globalist elites who have victimized many Americans, pa…
Without Regard to Race: Critical Ideational Development in Modern American Politics
Many scholars note that racial policy issues now focus on color-blind versus race-conscious approaches to racial inequalities, but they have not adequately explained how this development occurred or its consequences. Using work theorizing the role of ideas in politics, this article argues that these changes represent a “critical ideational development.” Diverse strains in earlier racial policy positions were reformulated to advance not just old r…
Identities, Interests, and the Future of Political Science
One of the central tasks facing any discipline is deciding what topics, among a vast range of possibilities, to feature in its research agenda. Once a discipline's practitioners have settled on the agenda, they must then determine what methods can best illuminate those topics. This essay argues that political science today needs to give higher priority to studies of the processes, especially the political processes, through which conceptions of p…
Barack Obama and the Future of American Racial Politics
In 2008, following a campaign in which racial issues were largely absent, Americans elected their first Black president. This article argues that Obama's election does not signal the dawn of a postracial era in U.S. politics. Rather, it reflects the current structure of racial politics in the United States-a division between those who favor color-blind policies and seek to keep racial discussions out of politics, and those who favor race-consciou…
Citizenship in Question: Evidentiary Birthright and Statelessness
aCknowl EdgmEntSThis volume reflects impor tant collaborations beyond those of the coeditors, Benjamin Lawrance and Jacqueline Stevens, who first conceived of the project at a dinner party in Berkeley, California, in 2009.Comparing experiences outside academia, Lawrance as an expert witness and Stevens as an investigative journalist, they noted similarities in their encounters with people struggling to prove their identity and citizenship.Convers…
What Good Can Political Science Do? From Pluralism to Partnerships
At a time when authoritarian regimes are on the rise around the world, higher education in general and political science in particular are facing declining support and sharper political pressures in many places. Political scientists have long promised that their discipline can add to knowledge about politics and educate citizens. However, doubts have grown about whether our increasingly pluralistic discipline collectively generates useful knowled…
If Politics Matters: Implications for a “New Institutionalism”
From Aristotle and Hobbes through Bentley, Truman, and Riker, many writers have claimed, more or less directly, that they are founding or helping to found a true political science for the first time. Modern scholars have usually expressed this aspiration via criticism of earlier “unscientific” approaches. Thus William Riker in 1962, advocating rational choice theory as the basis of political analysis, dismissed “traditional methods—i. e., his-tor…
Ideas and the Spiral of Politics: The Place of American Political Thought in American Political Development
Much important work on American political development does not feature the study of political ideas. This article sketches a general framework of how politics proceeds, the “spiral of politics.” It suggests how and why idea generation and reformulation may comprise a crucial stage in politics. It thereby highlights the need for interpretive studies of ideas, while also indicating how different sorts of political science research can be constructi…
Still a house divided: Race and politics in Obama's America
Living in a Promiseland: Mexican Immigration and American Obligations
Controversies over Mexican immigrants and undocumented aliens in Arizona and elsewhere show the need for fresh approaches to immigration. The “principle of constituted identities” holds that the more a government has coercively constituted the identities of non-citizens in ways that have made having certain relationships to it fundamental to their capacities to lead free and meaningful lives, the greater the obligations that government has to fac…
Citizenship and the Politics of People-Building
(2001). Citizenship and the Politics of People-Building. Citizenship Studies: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 73-96
The Last Stand: Shelby County v. Holder, White Political Power, and America’s Racial Policy Alliances
In 2013, the United States Supreme Court decidedShelby County v. Holder, which invalidated Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The ruling is part of longstanding efforts to maintain American institutions that have provided wide-ranging benefits to White citizens, including disproportionate political power. Over time, such efforts are likely to fail to prevent significant increases in political gains for African Americans, Latinos, and …
Challenging History: Barack Obama & American Racial Politics
Modern American racial politics remains sharply divided over racial policy issues, with coalitions of political activists, groups, and governing institutions aligned on opposing sides. A “color-blind” policy alliance urges government to act with as little regard to race as possible. A “race-conscious” alliance argues that policies should aim to reduce material racial inequalities and that race-targeted measures are often needed. These modern raci…
Toward Progressive Narratives of American Identity
Donald Trump is one of many leaders who have come to power in recent years championing right-wing nationalisms often called populist. He has done so by advancing an "America First" vision of U.S. history, identity, and purpose that many find compelling. Liberals and progressives in America and elsewhere have failed to counter with politically resonant narratives of national identity that champion greater and more egalitarian inclusiveness. This a…
Legal Civic Orders and Equitable Lived Citizenships
Most modern Western political theories embrace equal citizenship as a normative ideal. Many scholars, however, focus on "legal citizenship" and conceive of equal citizenship as uniformity of legal rights and duties. Others focus on experiences of "lived citizenship" and conceive of equal citizenship as achieving sufficient economic, political, and social standing for persons to be seen as civic equals. Using the United States as its example, this…
Strange Bedfellows? Polarized Politics? The Quest for Racial Equity in Contemporary America
Some scholars see contemporary American politics as characterized by “strange bedfellows” on racial issues and by polarization driven by economic, not racial, views. The authors argue instead that on most issues with racial dimensions, political actors and institutions are aligned into two racial orders, one favoring “color-blind” policies and the other “race-conscious” measures. Coalitions on two issues—affirmative action in employment and major…
The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America
Journal Article The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America. By Philip A. Klinker with Rogers M. Smith. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. vii, 417 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-226-44339-6.) Get access Harvard Sitkoff Harvard Sitkoff University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 87, Issue 3, December 2000, P…
The principle of constituted identities and the obligation to include
Most analysts agree that democratic theorists have not offered a persuasive answer to the question of how the boundaries of a demos, a democratic people, should legitimately be defined. Some contend that boundaries should be maintained in ways that preserve sufficient sense of common identity to sustain support for redistributive policies. Many others endorse the “principle of all affected interests,” but it has been widely criticized as unrealis…
Should We Make Political Science More of a Science or More about Politics
To paraphrase slightly, I have been asked to focus on the apparent tensions between making genuinely scientific contributions by advancing knowledge in rigorous ways within specialized subfields, on the one hand, and addressing substantive political issues of general interest in accessible fashion, on the other. My view is that, though we should try to do both things, we should give priority to the latter—to helping both disciplinary and general …
Who Belongs? Theoretical and Legal Questions about Birthright Citizenship in the United States
Notice respecting an Illuminated MS. On Vellum which formerly belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots
Professor C Plazzi Smyth describes how he acquired a photograph of an illuminated copy of a missal that once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots that was held in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. Professor Smyth also provides details about the book's dimensions, decoration, history and content. The photograph of the book is included in the article
Carlos V y el pensamiento politico del renacimiento
Carlos V y el pensamiento político del renacimiento
The hidden frontier: Ecology and ethnicity in an alpine valley
Reconstructing historical communities
Crisis and development: An ecological case study of the forest of Arden, 1570–1674
Life, marriage and death in a medieval parish: Economy, society and demography in Halesowen 1270–1400
Constitutional Interpretation & Political Theory: American Legal Realism's Continuing Search for Standards
Constitutional scholars have long looked for guides to analysis. In this quest, American legal realism first turned to social and behavioral sciences, then to history and tradition. But the results of these approaches were found to be ambiguous. Many scholars now hope to find a reliable analytical framework in political theory. Professor Smith argues that the proponents of this resort to political theory must complete certain tasks-identify sourc…
Land, family and inheritance in transition: Kibworth Harcourt 1280–1700
Citizenship without Consent: Illegal Aliens in the American Polity
Who Belongs? Theoretical and Legal Questions about Birthright Citizenship in the United States
Books in Review
Political Jurisprudence, the "New Institutionalism," and the Future of Public Law
For the last quarter century public-law studies have been dominated by "political jurisprudence," which tries to understand law as a product of political forces. Critics claim this outlook, as now articulated, has generated fragmented empirical work disconnected from larger normative issues. This essay uses recent "institutionalist" or "structuralist" perspectives, based on critiques of pluralist political science and both Marxist and functionali…
The "American Creed" and American Identity: The Limits of Liberal Citizenship in the United States
IN 1915, President Woodrow Wilson told group of newly naturalized citizens that they had just sworn allegiance no one, only to a great ideal, to great body of principles, to great hope of the human race (Harrington 1980: 678). The view of citizenship Wilson thus expressed has distinguished historic lineage, recently reaffirmed by Samuel P. Huntington. In Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, he maintains that for most nations, identity is the prod…
The New Institutionalism and Normative Theory: Reply to professor Barber
Nowhere in political science was the “behavioral revolution” of the fifties more pervasive than in public law. Normative debates on constitutional issues were left largely to lawyers or to the dwindling number of scholars in American political thought. Recently, as Professor Sotirios Barber observes, normative inquiries have undergone a resurgence in this section of the discipline, a resurgence within which the bulk of my ongoing work rests (quit…
If Politics Matters: Implications for a “New Institutionalism”
From Aristotle and Hobbes through Bentley, Truman, and Riker, many writers have claimed, more or less directly, that they are founding or helping to found a true political science for the first time. Modern scholars have usually expressed this aspiration via criticism of earlier “unscientific” approaches. Thus William Riker in 1962, advocating rational choice theory as the basis of political analysis, dismissed “traditional methods—i. e., his-tor…
Books in Review
Equal Protection Remedies: The Errors of Liberal Ways and Means
Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal, and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America
Analysts of American politics since Tocqueville have seen the nation as a paradigmatic "liberal democratic" society, shaped most by the comparatively free and equal conditions and the Enlightenment ideals said to have prevailed at its founding. These accounts must be severely revised to recognize the inegalitarian ideologies and institutions of ascriptive hierarchy that defined the political status of racial and ethnic minorities and women throug…
(A New Look At the Canon of the Ten Attic Orators*)
Ideas, Institutions, and Strategic Choice
Beyond Tocqueville, Please
Rogers Smith in "Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America" in the September 1993 issue of thisReviewargues that ascriptive inequalities (eg. racism, sexism, nativism) are neither mere deviations from liberalism nor only symptoms of liberalism. Rather, multiple ideologies coexist in uneasy tension. Jacqueline Stevens criticizes Smith for failing to attend to the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and others-whose descriptions…
Response to Karen Orren
Karen Orren's critique wages more war with itself than it does with my main arguments and evidence, most of which she does not engage directly. The bulk of my essay was devoted to textual critiques of Tocqueville, Myrdal, Hartz, and a number of more recent authors. I argued that their assumptions that liberal democratic traditions formed the core of American political culture led to inadequate accounts of major systems of ascriptive hierarchy, es…
La quête américaine d'une science politique démocratique et scientifique
The American Quest for a Democratic, Scientific Political Science. Rogers M. Smith [58-87]. American political science has always been shaped by two often conflicting desires : to serve American democracy and to be a true «science». Today, after an era characterized by the dominance of a «scientific» rational choice theory, it is now entering a period of transition an uncertainty. But certain possibilites for new convergence, specially around a «…
White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race
Journal Article White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race Get access Lopez Ian F. Haney, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press, 1996. xiv, 296 pp. $24.95. Rogers M. Smith Rogers M. Smith Yale University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volume 42, Issue 1, January 1998, Pages 65–68, https://doi.org/10.2307/846010 Published: 01 …
Political science (102 works) · Law (90 works) · Sociology (85 works) · Politics (77 works) · Law (66 works) · Philosophy (40 works) · Philosophy (32 works) · Political economy (32 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (30 works) · Epistemology (27 works)