Minority Rule: The US Is Not a Democracy, with Prof. Aziz Rana

Rania Khalek Dispatches

How is it that judges arbitrarily chosen by presidents who didn't even win the popular vote are appointed for life and can overturn our most cherished rights? What’s with the veneration of the US constitution, which was written by slave owners? Is America really a democracy?

To discuss this and more, Rania Khalek was joined by Aziz Rana, a professor of law at Cornell University and author of the book “The Two Faces of American Freedom.”

Follow Aziz’s work here: https://www.azizrana.com/

You can listen to all episodes of Rania Khalek Dispatches anywhere you get podcasts.

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TIME CODES

0:00 Intro

1:50 Judges for life

5:29 Why are Democrats so weak on this?

11:13 How can liberal and conservative justices be so chummy?

14:27 Supreme Court’s drift to the extreme right

18:49 Cult of personality around supreme court justices

22:12 Court’s achievements or people’s achievements?

27:01 Reducing the power of the Supreme Court

31:06 The myth of steady progress

35:42 Can we achieve through legislation what we fail to achieve to litigation?

40:43 The constitution as counter-revolutionary

46:23 History of constitution worship tied to imperialism

50:24 Liberalism vs the constitution: Contradictions

53:33 Have elections and democracy lost their meaning?

56:27 Is the US a democracy?

59:08 Foreign policy

1:02:57 Internal violence and mass shootings

1:07:00 Mass incarceration

1:12:12 America does NOT have universal suffrage

1:16:21 Radical constitutional transformation

1:21:48 Federal judiciary system, is it flawed?