Rethinking Constitutionalism | Mark Tushnet & Arnav Mathur | LAOT Podcast

00:00 Introduction: Constitutionalism, Democratic Decline, and Courts 02:00 What Constitutionalism Really Means 08:20 The Limits of Programmatic Constitutions 13:53 Directive Principles as Political Guidance 17:20 The Basic Structure Doctrine and Its Limits 25:24 Can Courts Stop Democratic Erosion? 33:15 Popular Constitutionalism and Democratic Self-Governance 38:33 The Future of Constitutionalism: Decentralisation and Hope Can constitutions actually prevent democratic decline? Why do programmatic constitutions so often fall short of their transformative ambitions? And when elected governments use the constitution itself to entrench power, through a thousand cuts rather than a single blow, does constitutional law have any answer? In this episode of the LAOT Podcast, Arnav Mathur speaks with Professor Mark Tushnet (William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School) about what constitutionalism can and cannot realistically do — and whether we have been wrong to expect so much from it. The conversation spans the competing conceptions of modern constitutionalism, the tension between programmatic ambition and democratic accountability, the basic structure doctrine and its limits as a check on majoritarian overreach, the role of courts in a democracy that takes popular self-governance seriously, and the phenomenon of front-sliding, where authoritarian governments choose democratic recovery because they believe they can still win. It also examines whether popular constitutionalism can travel beyond its American origins, and what a genuinely democracy-first constitutionalism might look like, including a surprising answer rooted in Gandhi.