In March Samuel Issacharoff, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law, published a new book, Democracy Unmoored: Populism and the Corruption of Popular Sovereignty. A pioneer in the law of the political process, Issacharoff has written extensively on law and democracy; his many articles, along with his Law of Democracy casebook (co-authored with Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law Richard Pildes and Stanford Law School’s Pam Karlan) have helped create a vibrant new area of constitutional law. In 2015 Issacharoff published Fragile Democracies: Contested Power in the Era of Constitutional Courts, which looked at the role constitutional courts can play in defending against authoritarianism, focusing on countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe.
Now Democracy Unmoored offers an account of how populist movements are sabotaging political institutions from within and undermining democracies across the globe. In a recent conversation at the Law School, Issacharoff spoke about the book with Princeton University Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Watch a video of their conversation.
Issacharoff was also interviewed about the book for the International Association of Constitutional Law blog and discussed it on Literary Hub’s “Keen On” podcast. A Kirkus review says Democracy Unmoored offers “an incisive diagnosis of the debilitating disease that has infected democracy and subverted its egalitarian promise.”
Posted April 12, 2023