We the People: The Civil Rights Revolution. By Bruce Ackerman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. 432 pp. $35.00 hardcover.

Abstract

the People: The Civil Rights Revolution. By Bruce Ackerman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014. 432 pp. $35.00 hardcover.Bruce Ackerman has produced a stunning achievement with his latest book, the People: The Civil Rights Revolution. The book is the third volume in a larger project centered on rethinking constitutional development and moving it away from a conventional courtcentered approach to a regime-centered approach. Ackerman develops his framework in the first volume, the People: Foundations, which sought to challenge scholarly accounts-mostly by the establishment-to go beyond the formal arena to understand revisions to the Constitution. Specifically, Ackerman takes issue with scholarship that privileges an Article V approach to understanding constitutional change. Instead, he proposes that a more accurate and richer telling of the story of American constitutional change requires scholars to look outside the formal boundaries of the law to the people and to the workings of popular politics. Cautioning scholars against blindness and creating legal fictions, Ackerman suggests the Court is one player in a larger regime that includes other political institutions and nonjudicial actors.Ackerman's framework of constitutional change is guided by a deep belief that if we decenter the Court then we will see that We the People are actually responsible for the successive transformations of the American constitution over time. Despite the inegalitarian nature of the Founding, Ackerman believes that the Founders created a structure that has allowed the peoples voices to be heard in the process of constitutional revision. Stated most succinctly by Ackerman (p. 3), sovereignty isn't a myth. Popular politics is responsible for change in modern constitutional doctrine.The most recent installment of Ackerman's project applies this framework to the constitutional moment he terms the DealCivil Rights era. The New Deal is presented as a critical juncture- a moment in time which set in motion a number of critical changes in all three branches of government that paved the way for the civil rights revolution. According to Ackerman, the major civil rights acts are the expressions of the People. In this way, Ackerman situates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 as part of the project of constitutional revision. The interaction between the three branches of government during this period is one of the highlights of the book. Many studies of this period look at the different branches in isolation but Ackerman's analysis underscores the importance of considering the different branches together and highlights their interdependent nature.To articulate how the different actors and institutions are connected, Ackerman presents a six-step process of constitutional transformation. The first step, signaling is when a mass movement gets the attention of a governmental institutional and signals the need for reform. …