About this item
No Democracy Lasts Forever argues that the Constitution has become a threat to American democracy and must be dramatically changed or replaced if secession is to be avoided.Deeply troubled by the Constitution's inherent flaws, Erwin Chemerinsky, the renowned dean of Berkeley law school, came to the sobering conclusion that our nearly 250-year-old founding document is responsible for the crisis now facing American democracy. Pointing out that just fifteen of the 11,848 amendments proposed since 1789 have passed, Chemerinsky contends that the very nature of our polarization results from the Constitution's "bad bones," which have created a government that no longer works or has the confidence of the public. Yet political armageddon can still be avoided, Chemerinsky writes, if a new constitutional convention is empowered to replace the Constitution of 1787, much as the Founding Fathers replaced the outdated Articles of Confederation.
About the Author
Erwin Chemerinsky is the Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. Prior to assuming this position he was the founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, and a professor at Duke Law School, University of Southern California Law School, and DePaul Law School. He is the author of 12 books and over 250 law review articles. He is a contributing writer for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, and writes regular columns for the Sacramento Bee, the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, and frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court. In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, National Jurist magazine again named Dean Chemerinsky as the most influential person in legal education in the United States. In January 2021, he was named President-elect of the Association of American Law Schools.
