{"product_id":"we-the-people-volume-2-transformations","title":"We the People  Volume 2: Transformations","description":"\u003cp\u003eConstitutional change  seemingly so orderly  formal  and refined  has in fact been a revolutionary process from the first  as Bruce Ackerman makes clear in We the People: Transformations. The Founding Fathers  hardly the genteel conservatives of myth  set America on a remarkable course of revolutionary disruption and constitutional creativity that endures to this day. After the bloody sacrifices of the Civil War  Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party revolutionized the traditional system of constitutional amendment as they put principles of liberty and equality into higher law. Another wrenching transformation occurred during the Great Depression  when Franklin Roosevelt and his New Dealers vindicated a new vision of activist government against an assault by the Supreme Court. These are the crucial episodes in American constitutional history that Ackerman takes up in this second volume of a trilogy hailed as \"one of the most important contributions to American constitutional thought in the last half-century\" (Cass Sunstein  New Republic). In each case he shows how the American people--whether led by the Founding Federalists or the Lincoln Republicans or the Roosevelt Democrats--have confronted the Constitution in its moments of great crisis with dramatic acts of upheaval  always in the name of popular sovereignty. A thoroughly new way of understanding constitutional development  We the People: Transformations reveals how Americas \"dualist democracy\" provides for these populist upheavals that amend the Constitution  often without formalities. The book also sets contemporary events  such as the Reagan Revolution and Roe v. Wade  in deeper constitutional perspective. In this context Ackerman exposes basic constitutional problems inherited from the New Deal Revolution and exacerbated by the Reagan Revolution  then considers the fundamental reforms that might resolve them. A bold challenge to formalist and fundamentalist views  this volume demonstrates that ongoing struggle over Americas national identity  rather than consensus  marks its constitutional history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44953271337013,"sku":"ByrdShop_0674948475","price":30.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780674948471.jpg?v=1770381200","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/we-the-people-volume-2-transformations","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}