American Colonialism and American Constitutionalism Seth Davis, Professor of Law UC Berkeley Tuesday, February 25, 2020 Americans are debating what it would take to redeem the United States Constitution’s promise of a “more Perfect Union” in a time of deep and stark disagreements about the nation’s future. Despite the partisan rancor, most Americans share a faith in the Constitution’s redemptive potential. Constitutional faith is the civic religion that shapes our constitutional law, theory, and politics and binds Americans as one nation, indivisible. This talk is about something our faith forgets: The promise of a “more Perfect Union” of “We the People” is not redemptive for colonized peoples who did not consent to the Constitution but are subject to American power. Seth Davis is an expert on federal litigation and public administration. His scholarship focuses upon the hard choices that we don’t acknowledge or hope to avoid when we create rights of action and allocate lawmaking authority. Substantively, he focuses upon these hard choices as they arise in federal litigation, federal administrative law, and federal Indian law on the one side and property and tort on the other.