From Kirkus Reviews
From distinguished legal scholar Ackerman (Law & Political Science/Yale; Reconstructing American Law, 1984, etc.)--an original and insightful study of the theoretical and historical evolution of the Constitution, and its meaning in modern times. Ackerman creates analytical categories that define both America's distinctive constitutional system and its transformative constitutional experiences. He says that while the American democratic system borrowed much from European theory, Americans have created a novel constitutional system that, unlike the British or German models, distinguishes between two types of politics. In ``normal politics,'' a politically disengaged populace permits interest groups to lobby democratically elected representatives while the representatives make policy, and in ``constitutional politics,'' society mobilizes to debate matters of fundamental principle. Ackerman sees three great transformative movements of constitutional politics--the establishment of the basic framework in the 1780's, the reforms of the Reconstruction Republicans in the 1860's, and those of the New Deal Democrats in the 1930's (who effected their sweeping reinterpretation of the Constitution by means of seminal Supreme Court decisions rather than by Constitutional amendments). Each of these movements, the author says, was characterized by legal creativity bordering on illegality (the framing of the Constitution did not use the amendment process of the then-regnant Articles of Confederation, and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not use the amendment process of Article Five of the Constitution), but, Ackerman argues, each was an authentic response to political crises of its time and was ultimately legitimized by the people. While Ackerman admires the Constitution, he is not blind to its faults or to its historical and imperfect compromises. However, he calls on private American citizens--those whose concern with government competes with other personal concerns--to work for the fulfillment of its egalitarian promises. A thoughtful, informative, and inspiring introduction to our national bedrock. --
Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
We the People can be recommended to anyone seeking a readable and complete introduction to the state of current Constitutional thought. Its analysis of the constraints on past and present judges and legal theorists, and the weaknesses in a panoply of jurisprudential positions is lucid and elegant.
--Stephen Presser (
Chicago Tribune )
This book is one of the most imporant contributions to American constitutional thought in the last half-century
--Cass R. Sunstein (
New Republic )
[
We the People] cuts through the futile and absurd search for the 'original intent of the founders' as the way to discover the will of the people. It recognizes that the great and extraordinary occasions required for action by the people have not been confined to a single instance in the eighteenth century. It deflates the pretensions of politicians in normal politics but magnifies the importance of political leadership in mobilizing popular support for constitutional politics when constitutional politics is needed. It gives pragmatic meaning to government of, by, and for the elusive, invisible, inaudible, but sovereign people.
--Edmund S. Morgan (
New York Review of Books )
One of the most distinguished works on the american constitution since world war II. It combines law, political theory, political science, and even a lil economics with a rare attention to history; and it does so while developing and extremely innovative and original argument, one that has a soild claim to acceptance...There is no doubt that the book will be highly influential. I think that it will significantly alter the way that people think and talk about the American Constitution...The book is extremely well-written. Indeed, it successfully carries out the most unusual task of making difficult matters accessible to an extremely wide audience...This is a truly distinguished contribution to constitutional thought, one that will reorient the field in major ways
--Cass R. Sustein, Law School, University of Chicago
The most imporant project now underway in the entire field of constitutional theory...the three volumes that will eventually comprise Ackerman's contribution theory to be published in this decade, but, indeed, perphaps in the past half-century...Ackerman posits a complex process of "Publian politics" where
We The People become authorized to change the constitution without ever invoking the procedures laid out in Article V...
We the people can also lay claim to being the most significant work in "constructive" American political thought since Louis Hartz's
The Liberal Tradition in America published some 35 years ago. For Ackerman is reopening the question about" American exceptionalism" and arguing, with extraordinary vigor, that American political development is indeed imporantly different from European and other models
--Sanford Levinson, School of Law, University of Texas at Austin
