ABSTRACT
In the context of ongoing debates on social scientific rigor and ethical commitments, this chapter examines growing interest in human rights in the university system in the United States, the institutionalization of the sociology of human rights as a field of research, teaching, and service, and the implications of the nascent field for interpreting major documents in the human rights canon. It argues for the need to revise the Constitution of the United States in reference to the cutting-edge human rights norms that find expression not only in the classics of the human rights canon. When placed in the trajectory of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought, the US Constitution appears as both a forerunner and a laggard in its stance on human rights. The chapter points to the widespread veneration of the "Founding Fathers" and the concomitant fetishization of the constitution—both of which figure prominently in the political culture of the United States—as factors that inhibit discussion of comprehensive constitutional reform.
