As Benjamin Franklin famously put it, Americans have a republic, if we can keep it. Preserving the Constitution and the democratic system it supports is the publics responsibility. One route the Constitution provides for discharging that duty?a route rarely traveled?is impeachment.Cass R. Sunstein provides a succinct citizens guide to an essential tool of self-government. He illuminates the constitutional design behind impeachment and emphasizes the peoples role in holding presidents accountable. Despite intense interest in the subject, impeachment is widely misunderstood. Sunstein identifies and corrects a number of misconceptions. For example, he shows that the Constitution, not the House of Representatives, establishes grounds for impeachment, and that the president can be impeached for abuses of power that do not violate the law. Even neglect of duty counts among the high crimes and misdemeanors delineated in the republics foundational document. Sunstein describes how impeachment helps make sense of our constitutional order, particularly the framers controversial decision to install an empowered executive in a nation deeply fearful of kings.With an eye toward the past and the future, Impeachment: A Citizens Guide considers a host of actual and imaginable arguments for a presidents removal, explaining why some cases are easy and others hard, why some arguments for impeachment have been judicious and others not. In direct and approachable terms, it dispels the fog surrounding impeachment so that Americans of all political convictions may use their ultimate civic authority wisely.
The Supreme Court's decisions on constitutional rights are well known and much talked about. But individuals who want to defend those rights need something else as well: access to courts that can rule on their complaints. And on matters of access, t...
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is considered one of the greatest justices of the United States Supreme Court and profoundly influenced American jurisprudence, especially in the areas of civil liberties and judicial restraint. At the same time, his abil...
An appreciation of the “greatest common law jurist of the 20th Century.” Includes a comparison and contrast of the Parliamentary system of Commonwealth countries within which Lord Denning operated and American Constitutionalism. Two lect...
Narrator: John Warwick Montgomery Published: 11/18/2016
From the admired judicial authority, author of Louis D. Brandeis (“Remarkable”—Anthony Lewis, The New York Review of Books; “Monumental”—Alan M. Dershowitz, The New York Times Book Review), Division and Discord, a...
From the prizewinning author of The Nine, a gripping insider's account of the momentous ideological war between the John Roberts Supreme Court and the Obama administration.From the moment John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States, blunder...
In this original, provocative contribution to the debate over economic inequality, Ganesh Sitaraman argues that a strong and sizable middle class is a prerequisite for America’s constitutional system. A New York Times Notable Book of 2017 ...
Many kids have heard of the Declaration of Independence, but few know the story behind the people and events that helped forge it. They may know about Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but do they know the roles that Patrick Henry and Thoma...
Renowned constitutional scholar Geoffrey R. Stone traces the evolution of legal and moral codes that have attempted to legislate sexual behavior from the ancient world to America's earliest days to today's fractious political climate. Stone crafts a...
In June 2013, documents leaked by Edward Snowden sparked widespread debate about secret government surveillance of Americans. Just over a year later, the shooting of Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, set off protests and trigger...
