The New American Social Compact: Rights and Responsibilities in the 21st Century

The New American Social Compact examines the need to redefine the social compact in twenty-first-century America. Grant explores the two components of this compact_the rights and obligations of citizenship_as well as what she sees as the four substantive areas that are critical to realizing a new social compact in America. Grant proposes a new social compact that would honor the expansion of civil, political, and social rights in America and would integrate these rights within a new civic procedural ethos, clarifying our obligations to each other, future generations, other nations, and other species.

Jane Grant is associate professor in the Division of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.