New Article: “The Urban Underclass as a Constitutional Concern”

New Article: Dawinder S. Sidhu, The Urban Underclass as a Constitutional Concern, SSRN.  Abstract below:

This Article explores the tension between two fundamental aspects of American history and law: the promise of liberty espoused by the Framers and enshrined in the nation’s foundational documents, on one hand, and the use of African slaves and their status as commodities, property, and instruments of economic production, on the other. It specifically asks whether the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — which signaled formally that the former could no longer tolerate the latter — reaches modern circumstances, in particular the conditions of the concentrated poor in American inner cities. As the urban poor are marked by limited economic opportunity and limited physical liberty such that they are without the minimal ability to compete in mainstream society, it argues that the urban underclass is the proper focus of federal remedial action pursuant to the Thirteenth Amendment. It arrives at this conclusion by way of an analysis of the history, purpose, and contents of the Amendment, Supreme Court decisions and scholarship related to the Amendment, and sociological studies of the urban underclass.