Bruce Ackerman is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University and the award-winning author of eighteen books, including Social Justice in the Liberal State and his multivolume constitutional history We the People. His book The Stakeholder Society (written with Anne Alstott) served as a basis for Tony Blair’s introduction of child investment accounts in the United Kingdom. He contributes frequently to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. Ackerman is a member of the American Law Institute and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of the American Philosophical Society’s Henry M. Phillips Prize for lifetime achievement in jurisprudence.
Ackerman makes a powerful case that the Executive’s reach has
expanded by leaps and bounds over the last half century, due to
factors internal and external to the presidency itself… The
questions he raises regarding the threat of the American Executive
to the republic are daunting. This fascinating book does an
admirable job of laying them out.
*The Rumpus*
The nature of the power embodied in the U.S. presidency has evolved
over the years, and if Bruce Ackerman’s The Decline and Fall of the
American Republic is right, the results of that evolution are
unfortunate. The contemporary view that tends to see the president
as the center of our country’s government and the locus of its
political power is something new and quite different from what was
intended by the founders. Ackerman, a professor of law and
political science at Yale who has written more than a dozen books
on American politics, makes clear that his fear is not that the
nation is in imminent danger of ceasing to exist as a country. What
seems more likely is that its distinctively republican form of
government could be lost, crushed under the weight of an unbalanced
political structure. In particular, Ackerman worries that the
office of the presidency will continue to grow in political
influence in the coming years, opening possibilities for abuse of
power if not outright despotism.
*Boston Globe*
Ackerman must be commended for the honesty and directness of his
defense of constitutionalism, irrespective of the ‘sensitivities’
he quite obviously offends… The book has already made a significant
impact in America where it has generated a robust debate over the
‘renewal’ of U.S. constitutionalism.
*Modern Law Review*
The persuasiveness of [Ackerman’s] individual points varies, but
the overall view is rather compelling.
*American Prospect*
In his extraordinary new book, The Decline and Fall of the American
Republic, Bruce Ackerman begins, quite literally, by condemning the
‘triumphalism’ that surrounds most discussion of the Constitution…
I certainly agree that he has identified a genuine problem with our
polity, and I admire him, not for the first time, in having the
willingness to speak in tones that many of his more moderate and
‘reasonable’ colleagues in the legal academy will undoubtedly
dismiss as overwrought.
*Balkinization (blog)*
Bruce Ackerman’s The Decline and Fall of the American Republic is a
profoundly important constitutional wake-up call. It presents a
powerful, multi-layered, yet highly accessible argument that the
body politic faces the serious and unprecedented structural risk of
presidential extremism and lawlessness—and a series of new checks
and balances that offer the rare combination of pragmatism and
originality. One hopes that the book will receive its just deserts
by provoking a vigorous new constitutional debate not only among
fellow academics but also, more importantly, among We the
People.
*Balkinization (blog)*
Ackerman’s central contention is right on target—our constitutional
system is in grave difficulty. He points to the right evidence, a
recurrent series of crises linked to the exercise of presidential
power: Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the illegalities of the Bush II
administration. These crises must be taken seriously as objects of
analysis as they are central to a proper understanding of where we
stand. Ackerman is also right to claim that the constitutional
triumphalism so pervasive in our political culture has gone
stale.
*Balkinization (blog)*
Alarmist or alarming, The Decline and Fall of the American Republic
is a serious attention-getter. Bruce Ackerman has adroitly woven
recent changes in our institutional arrangements into a provocative
argument that the expanding powers of the twenty-first-century
presidency have put our constitutional order at risk.
*Joyce Appleby, University of California, Los Angeles, author of
The Relentless Revolution*
At once audacious and plain spoken, Ackerman offers a fierce
critique of democracy’s most dangerous adversary: the abuse of
democratic power by democratically elected chief executives.
*Benjamin R. Barber, Demos, author of Jihad vs. McWorld and
Consumed*
In The Decline and Fall of the American Republic, Bruce Ackerman,
one of our nation’s most thoughtful and most influential
constitutional theorists, sounds the alarm about the dangers posed
by our ever-expanding executive authority. Those who care about the
future of our nation should pay careful heed to Ackerman’s warning,
as well as to his prescriptions for avoiding a constitutional
disaster.
*Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago Law School, author of
Perilous Times*
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