Join us in-person or via Zoom for an Ethics Monday with author and former ELSCE Faculty Fellow Corey Brettschneider in conversation with Director Eric Beerbohm. The discussion will center on Brettschneider's new book: The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It. A light lunch will be served. Registration required.
Imagine an American president who imprisoned critics, spread a culture of white supremacy, and tried to upend the law so that he could commit crimes with impunity. You may think this narrative speaks to only the present, but in fact history shows that American presidents have often pushed the boundaries established for them by the Constitution. In The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It (W.W. Norton & Company; on sale July 2, 2024), constitutional law and political science professor Corey Brettschneider provides a thoroughly researched account of assaults on democracy by five past American presidents: John Adams, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon.
These presidents illuminated the trip wires that can erode or even destroy our democracy. But Brettschneider shows that these presidents didn’t have the last word; this is the inspirational history of the people who pushed back. Over the decades, citizen movements have brought the United States back from the precipice by appealing to a democratic understanding of the Constitution and pressuring subsequent reform-minded presidents to realize the promise of “we the people.” The Presidents and the People is a book about citizens—Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Daniel Ellsberg, and more—who fought back against presidential abuse of power. Their examples give us hope about the possibilities of restoring a fragile democracy.
Corey Brettschneider is a professor at Brown University, where he teaches constitutional law and politics. He has written for the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and Time, and is the author of the book The Oath and the Office. He lives in New York.