No Democracy Lasts Forever was an excellent read. I loved the author's insights into law and changing standards.

Unoriginal Hyper-Leftist Wet Dream. In all honesty, had I known that Chemerinsky was the Dean of the Berkely School of Law, I probably would never have picked up this book to begin with. I would have already known most of what he was going to say... and now having actually read it, I can positively say that 95% of my assumptions would have been correct.

Basically, however you feel about the Citizens United ruling, recent SCOTUS decisions, packing the Court, the Electoral College, and the well-debunked "Russian Collusion" conspiracy theory from the 2016 Presidential Election is largely how you're going to feel about this book. It honestly reads as little more than hyper-leftist dreams about everything that has gone "wrong" with America for the last decade or two. Thus, some of you are going to sing this book's praises from the highest places you can as loudly as you can. And some of you are going to want to take a window to those places just so you can be assured that you will be able to defenestrate this book from those places.

Chemerinsky *does* get *close* to some genuinely good ideas, ideas that could *actually* solve a lot of the problems he names... and then quickly backs away from them, for the most part. His one consistent good idea is that the process of "Winner Take All" as it relates to Electoral College votes does in fact need to end - a stance I've had for much of my adult life, particularly my politically engaged adult life. The more interesting things that he addresses but then thinks *secession* is more viable are as they relate to the number of Congressmen. Chemerinsky correctly points out that the only thing limiting the size of the US House to 435 members is a US law passed less than a century ago - and laws can be overturned in a number of ways. Here again, one weakness of Chemerinsky is that in proclaiming the Constitution a threat - and even spending quite a bit of the text here decrying the SCOTUS as a threat - he openly advocates for SCOTUS to take action against this law. But even this idea is hardly original, as people across the political spectrum have been proposing it for many years already.

Another point Chemerinsky gets truly close to a near-original idea (it has been proposed by at least one writer) is when he proposes - briefly, before quickly retracting it and dismissing it as unworkable - that States be broken into "smaller States". But if "Democracy" is truly the end goal, and Chemerinsky wants everyone across the US to be as truly even as possible, why isn't he going full-bore here? As others have written, first, build the House up to its Constitutionally mandated maximum size - every Congressman represents exactly 35,000 people, the Constitutionally mandated minimum number of people per Representative. That gives us something like 11K US Representatives. Now, take Chemerinsky's own note here that "smaller States" would each get 2 US Senators... and make every single one of those US Rep Districts its own State. That would mean that every US Rep represents 35K people... and every Senator represents 35,000 / 2 == 17,500 people each. Meaning that for every 35,000 people, on average 1 Congressman of some level represents just under 12,000 people. Which in some urban areas is considerably less than an entire block, and in some rural areas could be several hundred square miles of territory. But Chemerinsky doesn't go here, instead he just continually reiterates hyper leftist talking points rather than seeking actual solutions to the problems he decries.

Ultimately, I deducted two stars from this book - the first is for the dearth of a bibliography, clocking in at just 12% of the text I read weeks before publication. Even being generous and lowering my 20-30% standard, as I've been trying to do of late, I just can't justify allowing such a small bibliography against such grand claims. Even here, the bibliography itself is quite cherry picked and doesn't show the full scope of what is going on through many of Chemerinsky's claims, but I've never really addressed that issue in other reviews and won't really address it here either.

The other star really was for the lack of objectivity and just how unoriginal very nearly everything about this book was. If you've seen nearly any left-leaning politician or activist speak in the last 20 years, they're all saying much of the same things Chemerinsky is saying here - including more and more of them openly talking of secession, which would be ruinous on us all.

Again, at the end of the day your feelings about this book are largely going to hinge on just how ideologically aligned with extreme leftist US politics you are, so know that when making your decision to read this book. Some of you are going to LOVE this book, and others are going to HATE it, and it will largely be for exactly the same reasons.

Recommended.

This would have been better as a long magazine/scholarly journal piece. While the subject is important and interesting, the author repeats information over and over. His suggestions to amend the Constitution are spot-on, but -- and he admits this -- that will never happen in today's polarized environment. My husband and I talk quite a bit about how disgusted we are with the current Supreme Court members who take "originalism" to justify decisions that have no bearing on modern society. I agree that our democracy could be saved by setting term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court members, getting rid of the filibuster and gerrymandering, keeping the executive branch of our government accountable, and eliminating the Electoral College. I doubt any of that will happen anytime soon.

I was most interested in his writings about states that are seriously considering seceding from the Union -- specifically, Texas and California. There have been a number of recent books -- both fiction and non-fiction, as well as the movie, "Civil War," that feature secession. I don't know if that will actually happen, but with all that is going on in our country, I guess nothing is out of the realm of possibility.

All in all, this book is a good primer for those who want to learn more about the history of the Constitution, the problems and possible solutions facing our country, and perhaps spur a new generation to at least become politically active. You might have to skim over big parts -- especially the repetition, but you will gain some insight.

Thanks to NetGally and the publisher for providing the ARC for an honest review.

This was a very interesting read in this current political climate. The argument was well made and easy to understand for those who aren't experts in constitutional law. The book did get a bit repetitive at points, repeating exact phrases from chapter to chapter, but overall I appreciated the argument and it definitely gave me some things to think about, though unfortunately as the conclusion suggests many of these possible solutions seemed far fetched at the current time.

Thank you to the publisher and for NetGalley, which provided me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

I just finished No Democracy Lasts Forever: How The Constitution Threatens The United States, by Erwin Chemerinsky.

Professor Chemerinsky is the Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and one of the nation’s top constitutional scholars. Prior to this book, I have read seven of his books. I gave five of them an A+ grade, while the other two “only” got an A (which makes me think that maybe I might want to reread them, to see if they can get promoted, but I’m digressing here). So, when I saw that he has a new book on the Constitution coming out, I knew I had to get myself an advance copy to review. I was very eager to see if it lived up to my high expectations.

It definitely did.

I used to revere the Constitution. But, as I have seen many of the problems caused by the document wreck havoc in the past couple of decades, I can longer say that was the cause. While he didn’t explicitly say that in the book, I believe that Professor Chemerinsky may feel the same way. His writing strongly implies to me that this is the case.

The book does an excellent job of looking at things the Constitution created that are big problems today (examples: electoral college, equal representation in the Senate) as well as things that are in the text, but are enabled by the system the Constitution created, with the help of the Supreme Court and/or historical practice (examples: gerrymandering, filibuster).

Let’s look at just one issue: gerrymandering. As Professor Chemerinsky points out, in the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats received 1.5 million votes nationwide, but the Republicans ended up with a 33 seat advantage. And, in Pennsylvania, in 2012, Democrats received 100,000 more votes than Republicans just in the state of Pennsylvania, but the R’s ended up holding 13 of the 18 seats.

To make things even more frustrating, that was done even though the Supreme Court had declared partisan gerrymandering unconstitutional in 1986. Then, to make things even more frustrating, in 2019, the Roberts Court said that, even if partisan gerrymandering was unconstitutional, the issue was non-justiciable. To non lawyers, what that means is the Constitution forbids any federal court (Supreme Court or otherwise) from even hearing the case, even if a matter is unconstitutional. Yes, it is a doctrine that should not even exist in a country that wants to call itself a democracy.

Even the First Amendment has become a threat to American democracy. It’s a problem that solutions cause problems of their own, but as the book points out, we need to start having that conversation. And while this book only addressed the free speech aspect, Chemerinsky’s writings show that he is also a critic of their rulings in the religion cases. I would have really liked him to also address that in this book, but its absence does not detract from what a great book this is.

The book has ideas on how to fix many problems, but those that can be fixed without changing the text of the Constitution, as well as those would need amendments. So this is not a book that only tells you the problems, but offers no solutions. There are plenty of solutions contained in it.

It is time for me to conclude my review with my grade. I was hoping that I was going to get to read another A+ from the esteemed professor and I was not disappointed. So, now he has earned six A+’s in eight tries, along with two A’s. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a A+ of course equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

Actually, I will conclude with a hope. I hope that the publisher also comes out with an audiobook version, so I can listen to this and enjoy it again.