Join us for an intimate evening with Erwin Chemerinsky to celebrate his latest book No Democracy Lasts Forever. This groundbreaking work from one of America’s leading legal scholars audaciously asserts that the only way a polarized America can avoid secession is to draft a new Constitution. This evening is being generously hosted by Alan Jones and Ashley Garrett.
The Constitution has become a threat to American democracy. Due to its inherent flaws—its treatment of race, dependence on a tainted Electoral College, a glaringly unrepresentative Senate, and the outsized influence of the Supreme Court—Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law School and one of our foremost legal scholars, has come to the sobering conclusion that our nearly 250-year-old founding document can no longer hold.
Much might be fixed by Congress or the Supreme Court, but they seem unlikely to do so. One might logically conclude that amending the Constitution would solve the problem, yet logic seldom takes precedent, given that only fifteen of the 11,848 amendments proposed since 1789 have passed. Chemerinsky contends that without major changes, the Constitution is beyond redemption in that it has created a government that can no longer deal with the urgent issues, such as climate change and wealth inequalities, that threaten our nation and the world.
Despite these troubles, Chemerinsky remains hopeful, revealing how the past offers hope that change can happen. The United States has been through enormously challenging and divisive times before, with a civil war and the Great Depression, and Chemerinsky ultimately shows that it may still be possible to cure the defects and save American democracy at the same time.
Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. The author of Presumed Guilty, The Conservative Assault on the Constitution, and The Case Against the Supreme Court, among many other works.
About PEN America Authors’ Evenings
The PEN America Authors’ Evenings are nights of literary dinners in private homes and intimate settings. Please visit the Authors’ Evenings webpage for our full calendar of dinners.
Proceeds from the PEN America Authors’ Evenings support PEN America’s programming to secure the liberty of persecuted and imprisoned writers around the world, to defend freedom of expression, and to promote literature and international cultural exchange.