Kenneth L. Karst, UCLA law professor, delivers the1996 Robert S. Stevens Lecture in the Moot Court Room of Myron Taylor Hall on Nov. 1. Charles Harrington/University Photography
Basic constitutional values that Americans hold dear are at risk due to unemployment, said one of the nation's foremost scholars on issues of equality and constitutional law.
Kenneth L. Karst, the David G. Price and Dallas P. Prize Professor of Law at University of California at Los Angeles Law School, discussed how employment is tied to the constitutional values of liberty and equality in an hour-long speech on campus. While saying the Constitution does not guarantee the right to work, Karst implored policy makers to draft legislation that would address the shortage of work and help all enjoy the rights afforded by the Constitution.
Karst presented the 1996 Robert S. Stevens Lecture in the Moot Court Room of Myron Taylor Hall Nov. 1 on "The Coming Crisis of Work in Constitutional Perspective." Karst is the author of numerous books, including Law's Promise, Law's Expression: Visions of Power in the Politics of Gender, Race and Religion (Yale University Press, 1993) and Belonging to America: Equal Citizenship and the Constitution (Yale University Press, 1989), for which he received the James A. Rawley Prize given by the American Organization of Historians, for "the best book on race relations in the United States."
He passionately detailed the values of work, aside from the obvious paycheck. Work, he said, gives one independence and helps make a family secure. "Work means proving oneself and demonstrating one's citizenship," Karst said. "If work is a source of independence, its absence means you are dependent on others. If work is a personal achievement, its absence denotes failure.
"Work has been one major arena in which America's basic Constitutional values -- liberty, equality and national unity -- have been validated or frustrated," he said.
Long gone from the American way of life, said Karst, is the unwritten social contract between employees and businesses. "If you promise to work hard, your family will be secure. That contract is now in breech," he said. No such guarantee exists for many workers, especially those working in temporary and/or part-time positions, he said. Karst also noted that the United States is one of the few countries that still ties pension and health insurance to one's ability to find a job.
Karst suggested that some politicians and economists are content to consider an unemployment rate of near 5 percent as natural and that full employment for those who want to work is unattainable.
"As long as the United States maintains a permanent pool of unemployed citizens, Congress and the president have the corresponding duty . . . to ensure those citizens that are unemployed and under-employed that their families are secure," Karst argued.
New legislation to help curtail joblessness might come in the form of mandating shorter work weeks, therefore enabling more people to be employed, Karst suggested.
He called the recent welfare reform legislation signed by President Clinton a "noxious product" that will not help America's problem in providing security for all Americans. "We're saying to these people, you can't have welfare so go get a job, and there's not a job to have."
The Stevens Lecture Series was established in 1955 in honor of former dean of the Cornell Law School, Robert S. Stevens. The series provides law students with an opportunity to expand their legal education beyond the substantive and procedural law taught in the law school.