"Here, the People Rule": A Constitutional Populist Manifesto

by Richard D. Parker

Book Overview

Democracy--its aspirations, its dangers--is what, most fundamentally, our Constitution is about. The question, Richard Parker argues in this powerful book, is how to imagine our democracy. Provocative in style and substance, this manifesto challenges orthodoxies of constitutional legal studies, particularly the idea that constitutionalism and populist democracy stand opposed. Parker presents a populist argument. He contends that the mission of...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674389263
• ISBN13: 9780674389267
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

A constitutional road to the peoples' rule

This book is not an easy read. It must be read slowly, thoughtfully and more than once. If read this way it will surely reward the reader for his or her time and effort. It will reward readers by stimulating their thinking about America's number one public policy problem: its out-of-control federal government. Parker is an independent thinker. I first became familiar with his thinking while reading the transcript of the 1998 hearings before the House Sub-Committee on the Constitution. Parker was the only Democrat selected to testify who believed Clinton should be impeached. He calls "Here the people rule" a populist manifesto. It uses a story by Thomas Mann to discuss the two prevalent attitudes towards majority rule (positive and negative). I take his own attitude to be that majority rule, with all its difficulties and attendant problems, is by far the best way to govern. He seems, however, to associate populism with ordinary (statutory) law and the political energy of statutory law-makers and their constituents. He associates the Constitution with elitism and depreciates it in favor of statutes and "ordinary political energy.' I understand his making these associations because Parker's experience with the Constitution has been obtained among academics and, in particular, constitutional lawyers. However, his own disillusioning experience does not change the fact that Madison (in Federalist 53) alluded to our Constitution as "established by the people and unalterable by the government." Neither does it change the fact that Article V limits the power os Congress in this respect to proposing amendments and deciding whether they are to be approved by state legislatures or by state conventions. Admittedly, Madison's words have an empty ring. All twenty-seven of our constitutional amendments were proposed by the federal government and twenty-six were approved by state governments. This sad record, however, cannot be blamed on Congress, the presidency or the judiciary. It is our (the people's) fault. Statutes are the province of government, but our Constitutions is our province and our responsibility. The 1st Amendment gives us the right to petition our state legislatures to apply for a constitutional convention. The 9th and 10th Amendments can be used to make the states' compliance with these petitions mandatory. It is no one's fault but our own that we have abdicated our power to Congress and failed to propose an "anti-corruption" amendment to our Constitution. Such an amendment could put us back in control of our presently out-of-control government. Parker concludes that "the purpose of modern constitutional law should be `to promote majority rule." He believes that we should be both enabled and encouraged to take part" in politics. I applaud his views. They can best be achieved, however, not by downplaying our "reverence" for our Constitution, but by encouraging and facilitating our ability to change it. The Constitution is our province, no